It’s January, and it’s been ages since my last post. Last year’s harvest was pretty pitiful due to the bad weather in the UK, a couple of kilos of tomatoes, a few onions, a sack of new potatoes or two and (admittedly) endless courgettes and marrows (courgettes are immortal…I swear). Hence the lack of posts in 2012!
This year we’re going to put up our plastic greenhouse and try to grow a few plants which can cope with the weather, I wanted to get started nice and early, with some plants to grow indoors!
I was wondering what to do with a whole bunch of seeds left over from the last couple of years, some of which are, apparently, “out of date.” I didn’t want to risk them not germinating in a spot up the plot, and I’ve bought new varieties this year so I decided to plant a whole bunch in a seed tray as “micro salad.”
Micro salad is basically cress from seeds which are more expensive than mustard cress seeds- think celebrity cress.
Here’s some fancy food with a “micro herb salad” atop it
Micro salad can really be created from any plants which will have tasty young foliage. But popular varieties, selected for their taste and colour are:
-Mizuna
– Radish
-Carrot
-Coriander
-Purple Basil
-Beetroot
-Chives
-Endive
-Chicory
-Land Cress
-Pea Shoots
-Kale
-Radicchio
-Red Mustard Frills
-Celery
Called micro greens in the US, this trend seems particularly popular in the states, with a number of shops selling portions of these posh cressies online, and some UK firms even following the trend, and seed companies cashing in on micro equipment and seed varieties.
So this seemed like a great way to use up my old seeds and get a teeny crop to add some class to my dinners in just days.
So I got two old vegetable containers (no drainage holes, easy peasy), filled them with seed compost and sprinkled the seeds on top (I used lemon basil, mooli radish, spinach, beetroot, carrot and onion seeds), covered with a little more soil and kept moist and just a few days later look what peeked out-
The green shoots are spinach, the red beetroot, I actually took these pics a few days ago and I know have some cresses ready to cut- a great idea if you need a few sprinklings of greenery for your daily sarnie but hate watching bags of salad mould away in the fridge, or if you have a posh dinner party coming up in a few weeks.
Trowel to Table 