“Microgreens” are tender young plants grown from the seed of certain herb, vegetable, and grain crops that can be clipped at the stem and eaten fresh within 2 weeks of germinating.
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Some chefs have touted the taste, texture, color, and delicate appearance of microgreens, adding them to soups, salads, sandwiches, and main dishes. Microgreens can also contain more nutrients than full-grown plants. Red cabbage microgreens, in particular, have garnered attention for their potential to help protect against chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, a leading cause of death in the United States.
- Mice on high-fat diets containing either type of red cabbage had lower levels of blood-cholesterol and triglycerides associated with liver inflammation than mice on high-fat diets without the vegetable.
- Both forms of red cabbage (mature and microgreen) helped the mice gain less weight from their high-fat diets than their vegetable-free peers.
- Mice on diets with red cabbage microgreens had lower levels of “bad” (low density lipoprotein) cholesterol than mice on diets with mature red cabbage. Perhaps not surprisingly, mice on low-fat diets were healthiest of all groups.
- Red cabbage microgreens had more polyphenols and glucosinolates than mature red cabbage. Both are “phytonutrients” thought to confer antioxidant, cholesterol-lowering, and anti-inflammatory properties when consumed.
Bottom line – you can grow microgreens (seedling vegetables) easily in your garden.
Practical Garden Tip
The normal thing to do with a vegetable such as lettuce is to sow a row rather thickly without worrying too much about distance apart. This means you harvest those extra plants when you take out the excess seedlings (they’re microgreens) and eat them.
Slowly but surely, you thin out the row eating the growing plants to only leave those plants you want to mature.
Easily done with lettuce, spinach, kale, (all the plants you eat as green leaves)