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Hello Darkness, My Microgreens' friend: Embracing the Dark for Bigger, Sweeter Shoots · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and while I often portray myself as an expert
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  in hydroponics, one area I don't claim to be an expert in is microgreens.
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  And I've been playing around with microgreens this year and learning a lot of interesting things.
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  And so today's episode is about one of the key things I've learned about growing microgreens.
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  I said yesterday the title of this episode could be
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  hello darkness my old friend as simon
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  and garfunkel sang hello darkness my old friend i
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  come to talk with you again because a vision softly
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  creeping left its seeds while i
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  was sleeping or an even
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  better summary would be bane
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  from the batman movies oh you think
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  darkness is your ally you merely adopted the dark
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  i was born in it molded by it i
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  didn't see the light until i was already a man by
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  then it was nothing to me but blinding and that's
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  because i've learned as the quotes say
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  there i've learned to love the darkness when it comes
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  to don't worry i'm not going to do a darkness quote there from
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  the band the darkness I've learned to love the darkness
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  when it grows microgreens as a plant physiologist
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  I'm often scared of putting plants in the dark because
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  I think they're going to die or get pests and disease often.
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  Plants get aphids and things like this fungal diseases
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  when you keep them in the dark or too dark even etiolated
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  crops like rhubarb and asparagus I've struggled
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  with but with microgreens you not
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  only have to love the darkness you really have to embrace it
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  and use it and not be scared of it and that's because
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  you just don't get any crop unless for the
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  vast vast majority of microgreens and also the crops
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  rubbish if you don't use darkness so
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  you put your seeds on your microgreen trays and then you put them in the dark
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  for what seems like a stupidly long time like up to a week or 10 days or even
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  longer and this allows them to go really long and leggy the sort of thing you
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  would never want your ceilings to do normally.
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  And that's because if you didn't do that and you
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  just put your microgreens into the light they would
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  be really really short and you'd struggle
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  to harvest them and then when you tried to sell them or use them
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  people would look at them and go what are they where and especially
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  for things like basil you almost impossible to
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  to harvest it even when you're just growing on a piece of paper and
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  if you're growing on cocoa or compost you're just going to get loads
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  of cocoa and compost in your harvest and
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  that's a bad from it.
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  Looks bad and also you there's a contamination issue there so you
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  actually makes it look like you've got more biomass even if
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  you haven't if you keep them in the dark they go really long
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  and then you can harvest them easier and also
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  the key thing here is they're sweeter as well
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  so if you think about like pop golden popcorn they
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  that doesn't even have any light when you're
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  growing it as microgreens you you sow it in the dark you grow
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  it in the dark it doesn't go anywhere near the light it goes to the light it becomes
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  green and the chlorophyll makes it taste disgusting
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  and that's because all that
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  starch and the oils in the seeds are converted
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  to lovely sugars in the etiolated seedlings
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  the long leggy seedlings and so the taste
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  is really improved by growing it in the dark even things like wheatgrass onions
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  things like this mustard all whole host of
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  different crops even pea shoots should be
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  grown in the dark and i've always struggled i put them in the dark for maybe one
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  or two days and then my crop hasn't been very good so now
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  but then i've noticed something as well i noticed that when i throw seedlings
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  into a compost bin or into my wormery they survive for weeks and weeks and weeks
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  as these once they've germinated in there without me lifting the lid on the
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  wormery or the compost bin.
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  And they can just sit there in stasis. And so I was always worried that they're
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  just going to use up all their energy and then just keel over and die.
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  But that doesn't happen. They just get to the tallest they can be.
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  And as long as they've got a bit of moisture and they're not going to get gray
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  mold or anything like that, they'll just stay there.
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  And so you don't need to worry about them dying.
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  Or I know you might lose a day or two of production, but
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  you'll soon come to realize what's the maximum number of days that gets you
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  the most amount of growth and so i started to try and embrace this and see how
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  far i can push it see how far how tall i can get my microgreens and so i'm doing
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  experiments as i said basil mustard.
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  Watercress pea shoots and spring
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  onions because obviously we're doing a load of spring onion trials and i
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  think this technique as well as being really good for
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  microgreens could also help me produce really long
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  spring onions that have got a really long white what's the
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  word for it neck shoulder basically the the
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  white bit which is really good you'll notice when you've you've
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  gone to you you buy nice food because the spring
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  onions you get the white bits of the spring onions whereas if you get like a
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  pot noodle like a yeah pot
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  noodle or an itzu noodle or something like that often you
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  get all the green bits of the spring onions and they don't taste as good
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  they don't taste as sweet do they if you're going to eat a
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  spring onion you're not going to eat the green bit on the end you can meet the white bit
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  at the bottom so i'm going to help hopefully the darkness will
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  help me produce that so i mean i'm embracing my
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  inner bane obviously if you've met me you know i'm a
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  muscly hunk that looks just like bane
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  i mean i'm often described being a spitting image
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  of or tom hardy's lost cousin lost
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  brother lost twin me and tom hardy basically look
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  exactly the same i've got a bit more muscles so why
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  not embrace my inner bane if you've actually met
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  me you'll know i'm probably more like garfunkel out.
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  Of simon garfunkel with a massive six
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  head so maybe maybe it is right hello darkness
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  my old friend is more more appropriate for me than
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  a bane quote but yes i will be embracing
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  the darkness i'll let you know how i get on but yeah
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  i've really i really enjoy growing microgreens and as we
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  go into winter i think they'll help me and my family and my colleagues stay
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  healthy if you meet me in the next six months i'll probably be giving you a
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  free sample of microgreens that i've been growing in the lab in the grow room
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  i used to do this was with asabi anyone who met me for i think what year was that,
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  I think 2019, if you went for a meeting and we sat down, I would have brought a wasabi plant with me.
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  And it's a good way of advertising these little stickers that said grown with
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  liquid gold or grown with gold leaf in the US.
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  And so a good way of advertising what the product can do, the fact that it can
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  grow really high value products like wasabi.
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  And microgreens. If you've got any suggestions on microgreens I should be growing, let me know.
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  I've got lots and lots of room for growing microgreens because they don't need lights.
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  So that's the beauty of it. you only need lights for a couple of days so that's
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  the beauty of microgreens the disadvantage of microgreens is that if you start up
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  a business growing microgreens it becomes a bit of a chore lots
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  of man hours lots of processes and things like this and planning and spreadsheets
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  which i don't like so i'm not going to put it into a business anytime soon as
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  i said yesterday running a giveaway if you review this podcast on apple podcasts
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  and then send me a screenshot of the Apple Podcasts,
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  has to be Apple Podcasts, not any other podcast provider,
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  I'll send you a free gift in the post.
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  If you're in the UK, I'll send it immediately. And if you're abroad,
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  I'll send it you next time I'm in your country.
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  Nobody's done this yet. So maybe nobody can be bothered.
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  Maybe nobody's listening and I'm talking into the void.
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  Or maybe you're all just too rich and you're all happy to just buy product and
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  or don't care about the products and you hate all my products.
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  Either way that's cool but yeah if you do want free products you know dechlorinator.
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  Sticky fingers what else did i say humic and fulvic acid all
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  sorts of products and let me know what you you'd like and i'll try and sort
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  that for you but yeah all you have to do is screenshot an apple podcast review
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  don't have to enter competition there's no limits at the moment might be if
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  it's really popular but at the moment it doesn't look like it's going to get
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  really popular so yeah if you if you want happy to give away free samples to
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  all my lovely listeners and And that way,
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  the aim of that is to get up the Apple podcast charts,
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  to get hydroponics noticed by more people by being at the top of the charts
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  and beating these boring gardeners,
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  driveling on, providing no value, or even like,
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  you know, people doing DIY and stuff like that.
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  So, and celebrity podcasts. If we can beat the celebrity podcasts that are only
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  at the top of the charts because they've got a famous name behind them,
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  that would be Fan Dabby Dozy.
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  So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today. how I'm learning to not avoid the
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  dark and push my microgreens as far as I can in the dark before I introduce them to the light.
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  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, goodbye.