Seed for microgreens
Microgreens are harvested before the plant flowers, so there is no seed to save. Buy fresh seed and sow it thickly — that is the honest answer.
- Life cycle
- Harvested before flowering
- Pollination
- n/a
- Isolation
- n/a
- Seed life
- Use fresh
- Yield
- n/a — sown thickly
A microgreen is a seedling cut at the cotyledon stage, before it has flowered or even produced true leaves. There is no seed to save, because you have eaten the plant before it could make any.
This is not a gap in the catalogue — it is the nature of the crop. If you want to save seed from a species, grow it to maturity as a full plant instead.
The protocol
- 1
Buy fresh seed
Microgreen seed needs high germination rates because you sow it thickly and get one cut. Old seed gives patchy trays.
- 2
Check the germination rate
Test ten seeds on damp paper. Below 80 percent, sow thicker or buy new.
- 3
Store correctly
Sealed jar, cool and dark. Most microgreen species keep two to four years, but buy in quantities you will use within a season.
- 4
For seed saving, grow the full plant
Radish, pea, sunflower and brassica seed can all be saved — but from plants grown to maturity, following their own protocol.
What goes wrong
Expecting to save seed. You cannot. The crop is the seedling.
Old seed. Microgreens amplify poor germination because you need density. A 70 percent rate gives bare patches in the tray.
Saved seed from this crop?
Germination rates, what came true and what crossed — post it and let other growers learn from it.
All 14 protocols
Annual, biennial and vegetative crops all save differently. The index compares them side by side.