The ongoing process of growing delicious vegetables entails planting and caring for your chia microgreens.
Now that you’ve grown your microgreens, you’re on the verge of harvesting them and if you have never harvested microgreens before, harvesting your first crop can be intimidating at best.
So naturally, this begs the question, how do you harvest chia microgreens?
When it’s time to harvest, you’ll only want to make sure that they are ready, gather your gear, and decide what time of day you would like to harvest. After that, simply uproot the whole clump, cut the roots from the greens, and rinse and dry them gently just before serving.
To help you with harvesting your chia microgreens, read on, we’ve prepared more instructions for you.
Below we walk you through each step of the harvesting method in six easy steps, including what you will need, picking the right time, and preparing the greens just after harvest.
Scroll down to read more.
Harvesting Chai Microgreens In 6 Easy Steps
Here are the six simple steps to harvesting microgreens.
1. Confirm Your Chai Microgreens Are Ready To Harvest
The first thing you should do when you’re ready to harvest any plant is to validate that they are, indeed, ready to be harvested.
Microgreens grow extremely fast, so the harvesting will happen relatively quickly after planting. For microgreens, you will only have to wait between 5 and 12 days.
Upon assuring that your microgreens are prepared to harvest, simply look at their length.
Works Best: When your microgreens are one to three inches tall, they can be harvested. Do not wait longer than this time, as the flavor profile will gradually become more bitter.
2. Get Your Supplies
What you’ll need:
- Scissors
- Colander
- Paper towels
- Cold water
- Gardening gloves (optional but recommended)
- Large bowl
- Refrigerator
Now that you’ve confirmed your microgreens are ready to be harvested, it’s time to gather materials.
The only supply you actually need for the harvesting process itself is scissors.
You might want to wear gardening gloves as well, but wearing gloves is optional.
The other supplies you will need are a colander, paper towel, and cold water.
These supplies are not actually associated with the harvesting of the microgreens themselves, but are associated with rinsing and drying the microgreens.
As you will see below, we highly recommend rinsing and drying the sprouts immediately after harvesting. You will also need a bowl.
This bowl is to store the microgreens inside a refrigerator while you wait to serve and use them.
3. Harvest at The Right Time In The Day
After that, you’ll want to figure out the best time of the day to harvest your microgreens.
There are two things to consider when deciding when to harvest your microgreens:
- Harvesting microgreens shouldn’t be stressful. First off, microgreens are best harvested when it is cool and shady. You may consider harversting your microgreens right after sunset or right before sunrise. If you have your microgreens harevested in a movable planter, you can easily take the whole tray to a cool shady place, regardless of the time of day.
- Next, microgreens taste the best if you harvest, rinse, and dry them just before you serve.
For this reason, you will want to harvest the microgreens right before you plan to eat them. Keep this fact in mind when you are deciding when to harvest.
4. Uproot The Entire Clump
When the time comes to harvest your microgreens, you will harvest them by uprooting the entire clump of microgreens.
To uproot the clump, hold fistfuls of your microgreens and gently pull it upwards to uproot the clump from the soil.
If you do not feel comfortable uprooting your microgreens, you can simply go to step five.
Skipping this step is an option, however, our preference is to uproot the microgreens as we usually find it yields the best tasting microgreens.
5. Trim Roots From Greens
If you’ve taken out the whole clump, use your scissors to cut the roots off the greens.
Simply just place your greens to the side while you’re doing this step.
If you just skipped step four entirely and went straight to cutting the roots off the greens, all you have to do now is just cut the microgreens off the growing pad.
You may think of this step as giving your microgreens a haircut.
Regardless of whether you skipped step four or not, you want to cut all of the microgreens at once.
Even thought you’ll want to let the individual microgreens grow up to be an entire green, we advise against that.
If you let the microgreens grow or linger after the first cut, they will taste different, often a bit bitter.
To Bring it Home: To ensure all of your microgreens taste good, just cut all of them at once. Even if you end up not snackin’ the whole entire batch, we know it’s better than letting your microgreens turn a bit bitter.
6. Rinse And Dry Before Serving
Time and time again, the ideal time to harvest microgreens is right before you intend to consume them.
Assuming you took my tips to heart, you is now wash and dry the microgreens.
To wash your microgreens, place the plant inside of a colander. Using a cold running stream of water, rinse the microgreen until clean enough to eat.
Once thoroughly rinsed, replace the sprouts on a paper towel and let air dry.
If you do not consume all of your microgreens you may store them inside a large bowl in the refrigerator.
Microgreens usually have a bit of life in them and can often last a few days when stored in the refrigerator. Just be sure to not place the microgreens in the refrigerator until they have dried from rinsing.
Conclusion
Harvesting chia microgreens is shockingly easy!
Though your biggest hurdle will be knowing when to harvest your microgreens, including the right day and hour. For most people, 10 days after planting will yield the best tasting microgreens.
We also recommend harvesting right before serving the microgreens for best tasting flavor! Most importantly, try rinsing and drying microgreens directly after harvesting for optimal flavor!
We hope this article has assisted in harvesting microgreens quickly and efficiently!
Best of luck!