Veggie Spotlight: Microgreens

Farm Update

Our first Midland CSA drop-off of
the year!

Hi everyone!  It's been a busy week at the farm.  We've officially started the CSA for the season, and it was so great to see everyone!  We've been doing a ton of planting, weeding, and harvesting, and we also finally got our new driveway put in.  This will make it a lot easier to get around all of the time, but especially in wet and muddy weather, when our driveway was previously pretty much impassible.  It's been pretty dry, which has encouraged a lot of insects to come out.  Basically, they're looking for food, and our irrigated crops look a lot more attractive to them than all of the dry plants in the surrounding environment.  We've been having more deer trouble, but Fred has been going out in the middle of the night to try to interrupt their patterns of movement.  He actually camped out in the field a couple times last week, and it seems to have helped a little.  We're definitely going to have to find a more permanent solution though.  But as for the animals we like, the pigs are growing so quickly!  They've been sleeping in the shade a lot because of the hot weather.  The heat has also been good for our tomatoes, sweet corn, and zucchini, which are getting noticeably bigger every day.  This is the most intense part of the year for us, and this year is no different, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

What to Expect in Your Share this Week

Here are the options in each veggie station this week!  If you have a half share, you'll choose one from each category, and if you have a full share, you'll choose two.

• Romaine or spring mix
• Zucchini for everyone!
• Green onions for everyone!
• Strawberries for everyone!
• Kale, Swiss chard, or bok choi
• Basil or microgreens
• Surprise veggie

If you have your share delivered to your home or workplace, or if you pick up at our East Lansing drop-off, here are your options for this week.  If you have a half share, choose one, and if you have a full share, choose two.

Share A:                                      Share B:

Romaine                                     Spring mix
Zucchini                                     Zucchini
Strawberries                               Strawberries
Kale                                            Bok choi
Basil                                           Microgreens
Surprise veggie                          Surprise veggie
Green onions                              Green onions

If you have a preference for share A or share B, just let me know by noonish the day before your delivery day, and I'll make sure you get your preferred share.  If you don't have a preference, I'll just choose for you. :-)

Veggie Spotlight: Microgreens

Microgreens, packaged and ready to go to our local restaurants.

Whenever we bring something new and unusual to the CSA, we get a lot of questions.  “What is this?”  “How do I use it?”  One of the new and different things you’ll be seeing at the drop-off this week are our microgreens.  While we grow these primarily for our local restaurants, we use a lot of them at home, and now you can too.  Even though they look fancy, these microgreens are basically the very small plant (often from the same seed we plant in the field) of things like basil, cilantro, arugula, radish, and many others that harvested when extremely small.  To grow them at the farm, we  first fill greenhouse trays with a premixed organic soil from Morgan’s Composting that has the perfect nutrient mix to grow a healthy plant. Then Daniel, who has worked for us for a several years, will sprinkle the seed over the tray at a predetermined rate by hand.  After this he covers the seeded flat with vermiculite and waters the flat in the greenhouse to induce germination of the seed. Then after germination, the densely seeded flat forms almost a carpet of small 1-2 inch tall plants that are then cut by hand in large clumps with a knife.  These cut greens are then washed and spun in a hand spinner, and then packaged.  This entire process, from seeding to harvest, takes as little as 6 days or as long as 3 weeks, depending on the type of microgreen being grown for this time of year.  This week we will mostly have micro radish and micro arugula, along with maybe a little bit of a couple others.  They are best used quickly, as their storage life is not as long as larger leaves.  Restaurants and enthusiastic home cooks often use them to decorate the top of a dish.  In the case of the radish, it can also easily give something just a little more spice, and the arugula can provide some of that distinct arugula flavor. These micro greens are great used in sandwiches and other foods, and offer a gorgeous color contrast against the dish.  We’ve heard many health claims about mow microgreens are healthier than other greens, but we take these claims with a grain of salt, as most of this information comes from those who are either marketing microgreens or selling supplies.  Whatever the truth is about the health claims, there is no question that they are a beautiful and easy way to add some greens to a dish, and a great way to add a little flavor and more visual appeal to whatever you are putting on the table.  Enjoy!

Recipes

It's probably a safe assumption that you don't use microgreens every day, so here are some recipe ideas!  Some of them call for ingredients that are not available locally this time of year so you can't follow all of them exactly, but they are absolutely great as a springboard for customizing your own microgreen meals.  Check them out here!