If any sign of sickness or lack of nutrients is noticeable in the microgreens, such as pale, yellowing leaves, or a plant that is completely falling over, then spraying some fertilizer may provide a quick fix. and "When Hi, Im Corey and I love using gardening as a way to provide food for my family, learn life lessons alongside my wife, Andrea, and teach life lessons to my two sons. From all of the above it seems quite clear that the research of hydroponic nutrients in microgreen production is in its very early infancy. The best results were found when both treatments were carried out and represented an increase of more than double in terms of weight over the control. In addition to fertilizer, compost is also a great source of natural plant nutrients. Hydroponic plants receive nutrients from a different source; so it is necessary to use a fertilizer formulated for hydroponic systems.. Fertilizer can also be replaced by using compost in the soil. We have written an entire article on our own DIY Potting Soil and Seed Starting Mix which would work great for microgreens too! For microgreens that are sold live and attached to the substrate, the trays or growing units are simply collected from the greenhouse and, depending on whether they are sold wholesale or retail, they may be placed in decorative containers, then placed in plastic or cardboard carriers for transport and display (Fig. The process for fertilizing microgreens does not differ much from that of any other garden plant. Thanks for signing up. He was able to grow microgreens in both cases, but the trays with fertilizer added gave him a much bigger harvest. In this article, we will discuss when fertilizer should be added to microgreens and why fertilizer shouldnt be the first option to give nutrients to plants. One of our top soil recommendations for organic microgreen gardening is Burpee Natural Organic Premium Grow Mix (Amazon Link). This must-have soil mix immediately releases essential nutrients to the microgreens and will continue to provide these nutrients for up to three months.
If a plant, such as a microgreen, is not thriving due to lack of quality soil, then fertilizer is going to feed the plant and mask the main concern. This means that microgreens need much smaller root systems and can divert more energy into leaf and stem growth. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Receive our FREE blog post updates and monthly newsletter. When starting a microgreen garden, gardeners may wonder if it will require fertilizer. When microgreens are overfertilized, it may do more harm than good. The crust of the fertilizer begins to show up on the surface of the soil. You can mix Azomite directly with the soil. To maximize the shelf life of cut microgreens, place them in a refrigerator to keep them cool. If you are interested in getting started with microgreens or are looking for a reliable online store for seeds and supplies at a great price, check out our affiliate at True Leaf Market. Light: As evident when grown in multi-tiered hydroponic fodder systems, microgreens can be grown under low-light conditions since the seeds have stored energy they can use to germinate. It can also be used alone and has a wonderful success rate with microgreens.
Microgreens can also be grown in containers such as large open packs or flats filled with soilless peat or coconut coir-based substrates. Notify me via e-mail if anyone answers my comment. This is because the soil itself will possess enough nutrients to keep microgreens growing strong and healthy. You mix MiracleGro (liquid form) with water and then you use the blend to water your microgreens. The simple answer is no; it is not necessary to provide fertilizer to microgreens when they are growing in high-quality soil. When it comes to fertilizing microgreens, the most important step is choosing the right type of fertilizer that will work best to provide the nutrients your microgreens need. Uncover the growing tray after four or five days. Nutrient solution: Microgreens can germinate without any fertilizer application. You pull the plant from the pot and stare at the root bundle: do you leave it alone, or By submitting your planting information throughout your gardening seasons, you can help other gardeners answer popular and repetitive questions like "When do I start tomato seeds indoors?" However, microgreens will grow more and increase yields as light intensity increases. Plenty of soil options are out there when it comes to microgreens. Diseases: The most significant disease in microgreens production is damping off of recently germinated seedlings. If compost is not added in the homemade soil, then fertilizer may be necessary. Compost is a great fertilizer because it can be made from any type of organic scraps including vegetables, eggshells, coffee grounds, decomposed leaves, and more! Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. link to Should Roots Be Loosened Before Planting? Compost is whats left when the bacteria in dirt break down a meal of leaves, grass clippings, and table scraps. Your email address will not be published.
You must confirm your email address before we can send you. How do you fertilize microgreens? Just make sure the container has enough drainage holes, so accidental overwatering does not occur. Both provide essential nutrients to your seedlings and in this case, your microgreens but they are applied using different methods.. However this comes in agreement with paper one at the potential expense of nutritional value. The results in the table below clearly show that there is a strong weight gain as the nutrient solution concentration increases, again showing that at a full strength solution there is an expected increase of more than 2x in the final weight. How to use it? This hypothesis is however hard to reconcile with the larger and heavier plants. 2). Fertilizer is not necessary when using a high-quality soil in a microgreen garden. If you are using a soil that contains 50% compost, you can reduce the fertilizer amount by . Many culinary herb species are also popular as microgreens as well, such as basil (Ocimum basilicum), dill (Anethum graveolens) and cilantro (Coriandrum sativum). There are different ways of growing microgreens and depending on which one youll choose, different mediums are used. If you are growing in a controlled environment with no sunlight and rely on artificial lighting, it is not a matter of when you are going to provide light, but rather how much (the instantaneous light intensity). Please check your email and follow the instructions. For this reason, it also begins to work immediately. In theory, the word hydroponics means growing plants in water (from two Greek words meaning water and toil), but because you can grow plants without actually standing them in water, most people define the word to mean growing plants without using soil. True Leaf Market recommends the following three fertilizers for use with microgreens: If a gardener is using soil to grow microgreens, then it is not technically necessary to use fertilizer unless, of course, the microgreens are lacking in health or soil without any plant food or compost is being used. If you use composted soil you can add it at the beginning of the composting cycle. Other leafy greens such as Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) are also used. Any species can be grown as a microgreen; production is based simply on the species having a desirable flavor and/or color. A gardener will typically spend three to six months making proper compost. When there are any conversations about the best fertilizers and how to use them, they rarely involve microgreens and instead focus more on common garden plants such as vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2017.00007/full, https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1983-21252019000400976&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19315261003648241, https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3328/, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.9826, How to make a stabilized ortho-silicic acid solution with only 3 inputs, A one-part hydroponic nutrient formulation for very hard water, New tissue analysis feature in HydroBuddy v1.99, The Potassium to Calcium ratio in hydroponics, How to use organic fertilizers in Kratky hydroponics, The importance of accuracy in hydroponic nutrient preparation, My Kratky tomato project, tracking a Kratky setup from start to finish. If soil needs more nutrients, compost is a better option. Most fertilizers commonly available in garden centers do not contain all of the 13 elements necessary for plant growth because the growing media usually provides many of them. Place the microgreens into a light source. Soil mediums can include compost, potting soil, and other commercial soils such as MiracleGro for example. Hydroponic Microgreens: Do Nutrients Matter? The best set up for a hydroponic medium is to use a tray or materials like biostrate or hemp mats in addition to a nutrient-rich water-based solution. The best way to make sure that microgreens are receiving all the nutrients they need is to follow this ideal microgreen soil recipe: With this blend, gardeners should have no problem with microgreens not having enough nutrients to thrive. How to use it? You add this fertilizer to the water, blend it, and then water your microgreens. Many of the commercial fertilizers provide nutrients and such, but not without a cost. Propagation and young plant production: For microgreens production, propagation is essentially the entire production cycle, as they are harvested when the first true leaf is developed. This fertilizer is more of a synthetic type of fertilizer and should be used in small amounts. AMAZON ASSOCIATES DISCLOSUREMicrogreens Corner is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. The option of buying compost in the store is typically available, too. I will use the table below to reference different articles in the literature. Corey used General Hydroponics MaxiGrow (Amazon Link) in his experiment and said a bag will last quite a long time because it doesnt take much fertilizer per tray. Compost is extremely important in homemade soil. Too much fertilizer is a bad thing.
Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. This is because, without compost, a sufficient amount of nutrients is likely not available for microgreens to absorb and grow. This fertilizer shouldnt be applied until the microgreens have begun to come out of the soil. Check on them daily. The leaves are turning yellow and the entire plant is wilting. Fertilizer is a material that is added to soil, soilless mediums, or hydroponic gardens to increase the number of nutrients that are readily available for a plant. So far only a handful of research papers have been published on the subject and the conclusions so far seem to be that hydroponic nutrient solutions in a couple of different forms tend to significantly increase microgreen production weights. One of the most important goals in microgreens is to maximize the amount of weight gained by shoots from seed to harvest. Growers running side by side experiments seem to have found the same phenomena (see this video for an example), where adding nutrients increases yields significantly but at the expense of some of the flavor and potentially nutritional characteristics of the microgreens.
When making soil, it is necessary to use either compost or fertilizer. It may be surprising that three different ways exist to grow microgreens, some of which include soil and some that do not. Vermiculite is frequently added to soil to enhance its overall airiness, pH balance, and resistance to mold. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'microgreenscorner_com-box-4','ezslot_1',138,'0','0'])};if(typeof __ez_fad_position!='undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-microgreenscorner_com-box-4-0')}; What fertilizer to use and how to apply it to your microgreens depends, as mentioned, heavily on what growing medium you are using to grow your microgreens. Soilless mixes have little natural fertility, so they may need fertilizer. If you notice that your microgreens are starting to wilt or appear to be lacking sufficient nutrients, then you can consider using fertilizer in addition to the growing medium that is currently being used.
With hydroponic mediums, you may get through the whole growing and harvesting process without having to use fertilizer, because some water-based solution makes up for the nutrients that soil would provide. Leave the soil out for 3 to 4 weeks and allow the heat from the sun to naturally sterilize it. These hydroponic systems utilize a fiber mat that comes in rolls or even burlap as the growing substrate that seed is sown into and grown on. This can be used as either a soil medium or a fertilizer or both! Osmocote Osmocote is a brand of fertilizer that comes in several different forms to treat different plant needs. When it comes to soilless mediums and hydroponic gardening, fertilizer may be necessary because there is no soil for the microgreens to absorb nutrients, and they may require assistance along the way. If they dont get enough water, they wont grow much and are prone to growing mold. Essential minerals and nutrients such as potassium, phosphorous, and nitrogen helps in producing strong healthy plants. My Do Not Disturb method of gardening includes following nature by never disturbing the soil so plants can grow organically, the way God intended. This is especially true when making compost at home. The best time to use fertilizer when growing microgreens is when using soilless mediums or hydroponic gardens. Because many soilless mediums dont provide essential nutrients on their own, it can help to use fertilizer to sustain the growth of the microgreens. Fertilizer can provide a multitude of essential nutrients that are crucial to plant growth. Microgreens grow faster in a hydroponic medium and thus may be able to avoid becoming nutrient deficient as fast. donotdisturbgardening.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. It depends on the medium used to grow them. But its more than mere fertilizer; compost also regulates soil pH, improves soil texture, and helps retain moisture and microbes all essential for healthy plants., Source:How To Make Compost: Homemade Fertilizer Made Easy. Temperature: Microgreens can be grown across a wide range of temperatures. 1). Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. Its very easy to create a top-notch soil yourself. Instead of soil, the microgreens are planted in natural or man-made materials similar to soil, but not with the same level of nutrients. Beware of the brand and ingredients, however as some may not provide as many nutrients as they claim to. Place this empty tray on top of the growing tray to act as a humidity dome and black-out top. Mist the seeds with the pH balanced water. Liquid kelp provides a high amount of nutrients and using nutrient-deficient mediums will prevent the microgreens from becoming over-nourished. As an amazon associate we earn from qualifying purchases. (Get The Answer). It offers plenty of useable nutrients for microgreens throughout the entirety of their lives.
Any time a plant is noticeably looking a bit down or otherwise headed for death, then spraying it with a little fertilizer will give it a big dose of nutrients to regain strength. We are Janette & Jesper, and we love microgreens. RELATED:How To Grow Microgreens in Water: The Ultimate Guide.
Pour 2 cups of the balanced water into a tray and swish the water around to distribute it among all the channels. Supplemental CO2 should be used in greenhouses when outside temperatures are cooler and venting is reduced, and can also be used indoors when necessary. There is a lot of research to be done on the subject. Since the entire upper body of the plant is harvested and plants are sold by weight, maximizing the weight gain is vital in order to obtain the highest possible margins in a crop cycle. Channels used for microgreens are two to three times wider than the traditional 4-inch-wide NFT channel (Fig. Pruning and training: Microgreens do not require pruning or training. Another major benefit is that compost is much cheaper than fertilizer. Making soil is simple, but keep in mind that three essential elements are part of every great quality soil, whether it is bought in-store or created by hand. All microgreens come from seed; there are no vegetatively propagated microgreens.
It would certainly be interesting to find out if we could somehow have the best of both worlds. It may not necessarily make a difference in whether your microgreens grow or not, but it will certainly improve the chances of them thriving longer throughout the whole growth period.
If a plant, such as a microgreen, is not thriving due to lack of quality soil, then fertilizer is going to feed the plant and mask the main concern. This means that microgreens need much smaller root systems and can divert more energy into leaf and stem growth. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Receive our FREE blog post updates and monthly newsletter. When starting a microgreen garden, gardeners may wonder if it will require fertilizer. When microgreens are overfertilized, it may do more harm than good. The crust of the fertilizer begins to show up on the surface of the soil. You can mix Azomite directly with the soil. To maximize the shelf life of cut microgreens, place them in a refrigerator to keep them cool. If you are interested in getting started with microgreens or are looking for a reliable online store for seeds and supplies at a great price, check out our affiliate at True Leaf Market. Light: As evident when grown in multi-tiered hydroponic fodder systems, microgreens can be grown under low-light conditions since the seeds have stored energy they can use to germinate. It can also be used alone and has a wonderful success rate with microgreens.
Microgreens can also be grown in containers such as large open packs or flats filled with soilless peat or coconut coir-based substrates. Notify me via e-mail if anyone answers my comment. This is because the soil itself will possess enough nutrients to keep microgreens growing strong and healthy. You mix MiracleGro (liquid form) with water and then you use the blend to water your microgreens. The simple answer is no; it is not necessary to provide fertilizer to microgreens when they are growing in high-quality soil. When it comes to fertilizing microgreens, the most important step is choosing the right type of fertilizer that will work best to provide the nutrients your microgreens need. Uncover the growing tray after four or five days. Nutrient solution: Microgreens can germinate without any fertilizer application. You pull the plant from the pot and stare at the root bundle: do you leave it alone, or By submitting your planting information throughout your gardening seasons, you can help other gardeners answer popular and repetitive questions like "When do I start tomato seeds indoors?" However, microgreens will grow more and increase yields as light intensity increases. Plenty of soil options are out there when it comes to microgreens. Diseases: The most significant disease in microgreens production is damping off of recently germinated seedlings. If compost is not added in the homemade soil, then fertilizer may be necessary. Compost is a great fertilizer because it can be made from any type of organic scraps including vegetables, eggshells, coffee grounds, decomposed leaves, and more! Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. link to Should Roots Be Loosened Before Planting? Compost is whats left when the bacteria in dirt break down a meal of leaves, grass clippings, and table scraps. Your email address will not be published.
You must confirm your email address before we can send you. How do you fertilize microgreens? Just make sure the container has enough drainage holes, so accidental overwatering does not occur. Both provide essential nutrients to your seedlings and in this case, your microgreens but they are applied using different methods.. However this comes in agreement with paper one at the potential expense of nutritional value. The results in the table below clearly show that there is a strong weight gain as the nutrient solution concentration increases, again showing that at a full strength solution there is an expected increase of more than 2x in the final weight. How to use it? This hypothesis is however hard to reconcile with the larger and heavier plants. 2). Fertilizer is not necessary when using a high-quality soil in a microgreen garden. If you are using a soil that contains 50% compost, you can reduce the fertilizer amount by . Many culinary herb species are also popular as microgreens as well, such as basil (Ocimum basilicum), dill (Anethum graveolens) and cilantro (Coriandrum sativum). There are different ways of growing microgreens and depending on which one youll choose, different mediums are used. If you are growing in a controlled environment with no sunlight and rely on artificial lighting, it is not a matter of when you are going to provide light, but rather how much (the instantaneous light intensity). Please check your email and follow the instructions. For this reason, it also begins to work immediately. In theory, the word hydroponics means growing plants in water (from two Greek words meaning water and toil), but because you can grow plants without actually standing them in water, most people define the word to mean growing plants without using soil. True Leaf Market recommends the following three fertilizers for use with microgreens: If a gardener is using soil to grow microgreens, then it is not technically necessary to use fertilizer unless, of course, the microgreens are lacking in health or soil without any plant food or compost is being used. If you use composted soil you can add it at the beginning of the composting cycle. Other leafy greens such as Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) are also used. Any species can be grown as a microgreen; production is based simply on the species having a desirable flavor and/or color. A gardener will typically spend three to six months making proper compost. When there are any conversations about the best fertilizers and how to use them, they rarely involve microgreens and instead focus more on common garden plants such as vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2017.00007/full, https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1983-21252019000400976&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19315261003648241, https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3328/, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.9826, How to make a stabilized ortho-silicic acid solution with only 3 inputs, A one-part hydroponic nutrient formulation for very hard water, New tissue analysis feature in HydroBuddy v1.99, The Potassium to Calcium ratio in hydroponics, How to use organic fertilizers in Kratky hydroponics, The importance of accuracy in hydroponic nutrient preparation, My Kratky tomato project, tracking a Kratky setup from start to finish. If soil needs more nutrients, compost is a better option. Most fertilizers commonly available in garden centers do not contain all of the 13 elements necessary for plant growth because the growing media usually provides many of them. Place the microgreens into a light source. Soil mediums can include compost, potting soil, and other commercial soils such as MiracleGro for example. Hydroponic Microgreens: Do Nutrients Matter? The best set up for a hydroponic medium is to use a tray or materials like biostrate or hemp mats in addition to a nutrient-rich water-based solution. The best way to make sure that microgreens are receiving all the nutrients they need is to follow this ideal microgreen soil recipe: With this blend, gardeners should have no problem with microgreens not having enough nutrients to thrive. How to use it? You add this fertilizer to the water, blend it, and then water your microgreens. Many of the commercial fertilizers provide nutrients and such, but not without a cost. Propagation and young plant production: For microgreens production, propagation is essentially the entire production cycle, as they are harvested when the first true leaf is developed. This fertilizer is more of a synthetic type of fertilizer and should be used in small amounts. AMAZON ASSOCIATES DISCLOSUREMicrogreens Corner is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. The option of buying compost in the store is typically available, too. I will use the table below to reference different articles in the literature. Corey used General Hydroponics MaxiGrow (Amazon Link) in his experiment and said a bag will last quite a long time because it doesnt take much fertilizer per tray. Compost is extremely important in homemade soil. Too much fertilizer is a bad thing.
Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. This is because, without compost, a sufficient amount of nutrients is likely not available for microgreens to absorb and grow. This fertilizer shouldnt be applied until the microgreens have begun to come out of the soil. Check on them daily. The leaves are turning yellow and the entire plant is wilting. Fertilizer is a material that is added to soil, soilless mediums, or hydroponic gardens to increase the number of nutrients that are readily available for a plant. So far only a handful of research papers have been published on the subject and the conclusions so far seem to be that hydroponic nutrient solutions in a couple of different forms tend to significantly increase microgreen production weights. One of the most important goals in microgreens is to maximize the amount of weight gained by shoots from seed to harvest. Growers running side by side experiments seem to have found the same phenomena (see this video for an example), where adding nutrients increases yields significantly but at the expense of some of the flavor and potentially nutritional characteristics of the microgreens.
When making soil, it is necessary to use either compost or fertilizer. It may be surprising that three different ways exist to grow microgreens, some of which include soil and some that do not. Vermiculite is frequently added to soil to enhance its overall airiness, pH balance, and resistance to mold. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'microgreenscorner_com-box-4','ezslot_1',138,'0','0'])};if(typeof __ez_fad_position!='undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-microgreenscorner_com-box-4-0')}; What fertilizer to use and how to apply it to your microgreens depends, as mentioned, heavily on what growing medium you are using to grow your microgreens. Soilless mixes have little natural fertility, so they may need fertilizer. If you notice that your microgreens are starting to wilt or appear to be lacking sufficient nutrients, then you can consider using fertilizer in addition to the growing medium that is currently being used.
With hydroponic mediums, you may get through the whole growing and harvesting process without having to use fertilizer, because some water-based solution makes up for the nutrients that soil would provide. Leave the soil out for 3 to 4 weeks and allow the heat from the sun to naturally sterilize it. These hydroponic systems utilize a fiber mat that comes in rolls or even burlap as the growing substrate that seed is sown into and grown on. This can be used as either a soil medium or a fertilizer or both! Osmocote Osmocote is a brand of fertilizer that comes in several different forms to treat different plant needs. When it comes to soilless mediums and hydroponic gardening, fertilizer may be necessary because there is no soil for the microgreens to absorb nutrients, and they may require assistance along the way. If they dont get enough water, they wont grow much and are prone to growing mold. Essential minerals and nutrients such as potassium, phosphorous, and nitrogen helps in producing strong healthy plants. My Do Not Disturb method of gardening includes following nature by never disturbing the soil so plants can grow organically, the way God intended. This is especially true when making compost at home. The best time to use fertilizer when growing microgreens is when using soilless mediums or hydroponic gardens. Because many soilless mediums dont provide essential nutrients on their own, it can help to use fertilizer to sustain the growth of the microgreens. Fertilizer can provide a multitude of essential nutrients that are crucial to plant growth. Microgreens grow faster in a hydroponic medium and thus may be able to avoid becoming nutrient deficient as fast. donotdisturbgardening.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. It depends on the medium used to grow them. But its more than mere fertilizer; compost also regulates soil pH, improves soil texture, and helps retain moisture and microbes all essential for healthy plants., Source:How To Make Compost: Homemade Fertilizer Made Easy. Temperature: Microgreens can be grown across a wide range of temperatures. 1). Always read the instructions on the measurements to apply. Its very easy to create a top-notch soil yourself. Instead of soil, the microgreens are planted in natural or man-made materials similar to soil, but not with the same level of nutrients. Beware of the brand and ingredients, however as some may not provide as many nutrients as they claim to. Place this empty tray on top of the growing tray to act as a humidity dome and black-out top. Mist the seeds with the pH balanced water. Liquid kelp provides a high amount of nutrients and using nutrient-deficient mediums will prevent the microgreens from becoming over-nourished. As an amazon associate we earn from qualifying purchases. (Get The Answer). It offers plenty of useable nutrients for microgreens throughout the entirety of their lives.
Any time a plant is noticeably looking a bit down or otherwise headed for death, then spraying it with a little fertilizer will give it a big dose of nutrients to regain strength. We are Janette & Jesper, and we love microgreens. RELATED:How To Grow Microgreens in Water: The Ultimate Guide.
Pour 2 cups of the balanced water into a tray and swish the water around to distribute it among all the channels. Supplemental CO2 should be used in greenhouses when outside temperatures are cooler and venting is reduced, and can also be used indoors when necessary. There is a lot of research to be done on the subject. Since the entire upper body of the plant is harvested and plants are sold by weight, maximizing the weight gain is vital in order to obtain the highest possible margins in a crop cycle. Channels used for microgreens are two to three times wider than the traditional 4-inch-wide NFT channel (Fig. Pruning and training: Microgreens do not require pruning or training. Another major benefit is that compost is much cheaper than fertilizer. Making soil is simple, but keep in mind that three essential elements are part of every great quality soil, whether it is bought in-store or created by hand. All microgreens come from seed; there are no vegetatively propagated microgreens.
It would certainly be interesting to find out if we could somehow have the best of both worlds. It may not necessarily make a difference in whether your microgreens grow or not, but it will certainly improve the chances of them thriving longer throughout the whole growth period.