Saturday, August 4, 2012

Hot Weather Micro-Greens


An Assortment of Micro-Greens

Normally I don't plant salad greens from May until October as they don't tolerate the 85+ degree temps and the intense summer sun. The hot sun stresses the seedlings and that attracts white flies and leaf miners that suck the pigment from the leaves. Also, many salad greens bolt early or become bitter when grown in the heat.

This summer I trialed some of my more heat tolerant salad green seeds, sown densely as micro-greens, and planted in diffused light conditions. They had a few hours of sun in the early morning, diffused light and shade the remainder of the day. Surprisingly, some of the seeds I trialed grew well and weren't bitter when harvested as baby greens.

Green Romaine

Seeds that grew well as micro-greens during the summer
in diffused light conditions:
Arugula
Celery
Chard
Green Romaine
Komatsuma
Mizuna
Osaka Purple Mustard
Tango Oakleaf
Tatsoi

Any type of celery works as a micro-green - it isn't bitter in the seedling and early stages of growth. Celery takes 2 to 3 weeks to germinate and is very tiny at first. I planted it separately from the other greens.

The chard I planted was Flamingo - a small colorful heat tolerant variety.

I grew the greens in containers under a trellis that covers the lanai on the east side of my house. I mixed Black Gold Earthworm Castings, OMRI azomite and green sand into the potting soil and watered predominately in the evening to cool the soil lower at night. I sowed seeds as a mix and also in sections as some grow faster then others. The greens had minimal insect damage and in 3 weeks they were large enough to cut for salads.

As I trial more salad green seeds through the summer I'll update this seed list.

Beautiful salads featuring micro-greens:
A New Meaning to "Garden Variety"

2 comments:

  1. They all look so lush and beautiful. My greens are doing great too but that could also be because the summer temperatures are finally dropping and monsoon is here.

    Your romaine lettuce lokes great by the way...

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  2. Hi Sri! I bet your plants love the humidity from the monsoon. The humidity is low where I live because of the tradewinds. Unfortunately, we don't get much rain on the west side of Maui even in the winter. I'm really happy with this green romaine seed - it grew really fast and it wasn't at all bitter from the heat.

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