Starting Seedlings for Spring

Although I found I didn't like the intense taste of most of the microgreens I grew, beet greens transitioned nicely to baby greens and I was okay with chia seedlings. The light setup and growing trays also work well for starting seedlings for use in my aquaponics greenhouse and the garden when the weather settles. I have tomato, cucumber, green onion, parsley and marigold seedlings growing. I planted marigold both for their property of driving away harmful insects and for the healing benefits of a tincture made from the blossoms which are also known as calendula.

First Salad

I have never been a fan of radishes. While others looked forward to enjoying the crispy little red globes each spring and crafted radish roses as a decoration for veggie trays, I found the distinct 'bite' of the root unpleasant. If Sango radish seeds had not been provided in the kit I ordered I wouldn't have planted them. Because this is essentially an experiment, I started out with radish seeds. The past few days I have been harvesting the resulting tiny plants. I made a salad with quinoa, dressed with a vinaigrette of olive oil, lemon and sea salt with diced tomatoes, cucumbers and green onions. I cut a half a tray of radish greens and added them to the salad. The Sango radish microgreen have two purple leaves about a centimeter in diameter mounted on a slender lavender stem. They made an attractive addition to the salad and while they taste like radishes, they have less bite than the mature root and I liked the taste they added. In a couple of days I will attend a class on fitness where we have been asked to provide a healthy snack to share with others. I plan to half small Roma or plum tomatoes and hollow them out leaving the outer skin and fleshy layer to make little boat shaped cups. I'll chop the tomato pulp that I remove from the cut tomato halves and add it to quinoa along with chopped onions and dress it with the olive oil lemon juice and sea salt. Then I'll stuff each little tomato boat and put a sprinkle of the radish greens on top. Alternatively, since the little purple seedlings are somewhat exotic, I'll place a small heap of several kinds of microgreens in the center of the plate on which my little salad boats are served and invite my friends to taste the greens before they use them as a garnish.