Since I started growing microgreens, I struggled with this delicate stage of container gardening – watering the crop. I am probably not alone, this I strongly suspect.
Because when planting microgreens seeds, the seed is not covered at all but sitting on top of the soil, or if it is covered the soil is a very thin layer, there is always a real risk of washing away the seeds if you water the tray with direct high pressure water.
The watering process can easily push the seeds to one side of the tray reversing your nice spread of the seeds across the tray. The real challenge I faced was that it was never easy to get the correct spray of water that wouldn’t displace the soil and seeds in the tray.
I even went as far as buying a very handy spray gun with adjustable nozzles/spray output as shown above. I still recommend getting one like this and setting it to mist when watering microgreens. I just consider it second best to the method I will showing you below.
Since I discovered what I would Ioosly call the reverse osmosis method, this has been my go to technique of watering microgreens. If you find yourself without a spray gun, simply use this neat and highly effective method.
STEP 1
So, first get your tray. As you have probably seen on this blog already, I use punnets very often to do my microgreen projects.
Take your punnet and turn it upside down. Perforate the entire bottom of the tray/punnet with a generous amount of needle size holes trying as much as possible to have them evenly spread.
You only need to perform this step once or each time you have a new punnet/tray to use for this purpose.
STEP 2
Take another container which must necessarily be bigger, which I am calling container B here. Your container A is your microgreens growing punnet/tray with a perforated bottom.
Container B must have a bigger surface area than container A, such that container A can sit inside of it.
STEP 3
First fill container B with water and then place container A to sit in water filled B. Due to the displacement pressure caused by soil filled contained A, in typical fashion similar to reverse osmosis water in container B will find its way into container A by utilizing needle sized holes at the bottom.
This process is very neat and leaves soil in container A fully permeated and saturated with water. As shown above, the soil in the microgreens container is well watered.
The whole process takes at most 3 minutes to complete depending on your container size. You can water your microgreens this way from planting stage to harvest stage.
This has since become my go to watering method because of the very neat results which do not negatively affect the integrity of the microgreens.
One thing I didn’t mention earlier on is that I incidentally discovered this watering method.
I must have ran out of working space and decided to place a punnet with soil in a bigger punnet with water. To my bemusement, in a very short time, the soil which was dry became wet and thoroughly soaked with water.
In an instant I knew this would be my new way of watering microgreens going forward!
Let me know how this goes down with you in your own microgardening efforts.
