Which Microgreens Should a Beginner Grow? Start With Broccoli, Radish or Mustard

Start with a no-soak brassica: broccoli, radish or mustard. They need no soak, sow at a low seed rate so a failed tray costs almost nothing, and are the crops rated beginner here. Grow pea and sunflower second, once you know the tray, because they add a soak, a weighted cover, hull debris and the heaviest seed rates in the category.

That differs from the usual list, and it is worth knowing why. Radish, pea shoots and sunflower appear on nearly every beginner list you will find, with broccoli on most of them. That near-unanimity is the part of this subject with the least evidence behind it.

Utah State tells a home grower to choose microgreen-labeled seed "such as" radish, broccoli, sunflower or pea shoots, which is an example list rather than a tested recommendation. Maryland calls the cabbage and mustard family especially well suited. Neither establishes which crop makes the best first tray.

So, the published crop fields are the closest thing to a check that exists, and they disagree with the usual list on exactly two crops.

What to actually do

The usual five, against what the crops actually need

Utah State Extension names four of those same crops too, radish, broccoli, sunflower and pea shoots, but as an example of microgreen-labeled seed rather than as a starter ranking, so it is not counted as one of the four lists above.

Pea and sunflower are the only two of the five not rated beginner crops, and they are the two that appear on every single list.

They are also, on every mechanical axis, the two with more to go wrong:

• Both need a soak, 6 to 8 hours for pea and 4 to 12 for sunflower, while radish, broccoli and mustard need none. A soak is a step a first-time grower can forget, mistime or run too warm.
• Both carry high mold risk, against medium for the other three.
• Both sow heavy. Pea at 150 g and sunflower up to 167 g a tray, against broccoli's 13 g and mustard's 8 g. The median seed rate across crops is 23 g, so the two universal picks sow at roughly 6.5 to 7.3 times the median crop, and pea uses 18.8 times mustard's seed.

That last one is the money. A failed first tray of mustard costs 8 grams of seed. A failed first tray of pea costs 150. The full seed-rate range runs 409-fold, and this is the corner of it that lands on a beginner.

None of this says pea or sunflower fail more often. It says the two crops recommended most universally are the two carrying the most steps, the most seed and the higher mold rating, which is the opposite of what "forgiving" is supposed to mean.

Seventeen beginner-rated crops are never named at all

Sixty-two crops carry a difficulty rating: 20 Beginner, 33 Moderate, 9 Difficult.

Three of those 20 are on the consensus list. The other 17 are missing from all five lists: arugula, broccoli raab, cauliflower, clover, collard, garden cress, green cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, komatsuna, lentil, mizuna, pak choi, red cabbage, tatsoi, turnip and wheatgrass.

And 18 of the 20 beginner-rated crops need no soak at all, including most of that unnamed list. If the fewest steps is the criterion the beginner pages say they are using, the pages are not applying it.

One number is worth pausing on. Zero of the 20 beginner-rated crops carry a low mold risk. Not one. That is not a gap in the data, it is the answer: mold is a property of your tray, not of your crop. Maryland and Penn State both describe it that way, naming moist rather than saturated media, airflow and vented covers as the controls, and warm humid conditions as what favors damping off. The practice pages that do offer a crop-by-crop mold ranking supply no tray counts, conditions or comparator.

What "easy" actually means

"Easy" has no fixed definition. These are the criteria the guides actually name, and what each is worth:

• Fast germination. Maryland puts cabbage-family germination at about 36 hours at 72°F and says the family germinates faster than the beet family. That is speed, not forgiveness, and they are not the same thing.
• Fewer special steps. Maryland lists pea, sunflower, corn, chickpea, beet, chard, cilantro, mung bean and buckwheat for a 6 to 12 hour soak. A no-soak crop removes a task. Whether removing it helps you is something your own first trays will show.
• Tolerance of low light. Maryland says lettuce, arugula, mustards and Asian greens grow acceptably under less-than-ideal light. This is the closest thing to an extension-backed forgiveness criterion that exists, and note that it names almost none of the consensus crops.
• Something you want to eat. Clemson and Utah State both publish flavor tables: broccoli mild, sunflower nutty, pea sweet, radish nutty and spicy, arugula peppery. A technically perfect tray nobody eats is a failed recommendation.

What "easy" really means is how often a first tray stays usable. That depends on the mistakes a beginner makes: overwatering, missed watering, weak light, temperature swings and uneven sowing. Count your own usable trays by crop to find which crops forgive you.

Practice pages use outcome language without a denominator. "Usable harvest within two weeks" is not a success rate unless the failures are counted, so count yours.

Per-crop germination percentages do get published, and they will not settle it either, because germination is batch, temperature and treatment specific. Penn State's seed-density tool asks for the germinability of your own batch, which is the correct framing and the reason a permanent per-crop ease score does not exist.

Why the consensus list is not evidence

All four practice lists share the same core. Every one contains radish, pea and sunflower; three of four add broccoli; two add mustard. Exact agreement is zero of four, because list lengths and extras differ.

All four give reasons, and none gives evidence. The reasons offered are speed, vigor, no soak, large harvest, flavor and claimed tolerance. Not one links its specific "forgiving" assertion to a comparative novice trial.

That is a shared recommendation tradition, not independent derivation. It is not proof of copying either. It is the ordinary situation where everyone draws on the same familiar core without failure data behind it, so agreement here carries much less weight than it looks like it should.

The pages get real things right, and dismissing them would be the opposite error. They separate flavor and purpose from growing mechanics, which matters. They warn that pea and sunflower carry an extra soak. They warn against mixing species in one tray, which Maryland and Penn State both support because germination and growth rates differ. Practice observations generate useful testable warnings. They just must not be restated as measured mold rates or success probabilities.

One more thing they get right: a retailer's product link is not a sales ranking, and none of these pages publishes units or revenue by crop. Pick a crop you will eat, and let your own first tray tell you how it went.

What to track on your own trays

• Log each harvest as usable or not. Decide what "usable" means before you sow: safe, not moldy, harvestable and actually eaten. Write down the crop, then count how many of your trays meet it.
• Note what went wrong. When a tray fails, write down whether it was overwatered, underwatered, short of light, too warm or unevenly sown, by crop, so you can see which crops forgive your habits.
• Log mold by crop. Note the crop, seed density, watering and room temperature for any tray that molds, so you can see which of your crops and conditions cause trouble in your room.
• Time your sowing by seed size. Note how long sowing takes and which steps you skip with large seeds against small ones, rather than assuming large seeds are easier because you can see them.
• Compare short and long crops. Fewer days is less time for something to go wrong. Note your losses on quick crops against slow ones.
• Write down what you grow first and whether you ate it. Record the crop, your setting, your experience and the harvest, so your next order follows your own results.
• Watch what a failed tray costs you. Note whether the price of a failure, 8 grams of seed against 150 grams above, changes whether you sow again.

Sources

Opened 2026-08-12 and rechecked 2026-10-20. The difficulty, mold risk, soak, seed rate and harvest figures for individual crops are this site's own variety fields, read across all 62 entries; the counts of 20 beginner, 33 moderate and 9 difficult, the 17 unnamed beginner crops, the 18 beginner crops needing no soak and the zero beginner crops at low mold risk are counts from those fields.

The list counts are from the five pages named here, audited on one date, and are not a count of every beginner page online.

• Utah State University Extension, grow your own microgreens - the 20 February 2025 guidance naming radish, broccoli, sunflower and pea shoots as example microgreen seed choices, the dated crop table giving pea a 6 hour and sunflower a 12 hour soak with radish and broccoli at none, covered time from 1 to 2 days for radish to 7 to 14 for cilantro, a 2 to 5 lb weight over the first half of the dark period, flavors including arugula peppery, broccoli mild, pea sweet, radish nutty and spicy and sunflower nutty and sweet, and the note that repurposed pie tins or takeout trays can work.
• University of Maryland Extension, growing microgreens and baby greens indoors - the cabbage and mustard family named as especially well suited and germinating faster than the beet family, about 36 hours at 72°F for cabbage-family germination, the 6 to 12 hour soak list covering pea, sunflower, corn, chickpea, beet, chard, cilantro, mung bean and buckwheat, lettuce, arugula, mustards and Asian greens named as growing acceptably under less-than-ideal light, seed counts of 8,000 per oz for broccoli and 15,000 for mustard against 1,500 for beet, the advice against mixing species because germination and growth rates differ, and moist rather than saturated media with airflow and vented covers as the disease controls.
• Clemson Extension, growing microgreens - the 21 November 2018 guidance on a shallow 1 to 2 inch tray with drainage, keeping light about 4 inches above new sprouts to guard against leggy seedlings, avoiding garden soil, manure and compost and using untreated microgreen-labeled seed, the definition of microgreens as harvested when true leaves begin to form, and the harvest-time and flavor table covering broccoli, sunflower and pea among others.
• Penn State Extension, growing microgreens - the advice to select one type per tray, and damping off identified as the only disease encountered in its class with warm humid conditions favoring it.
• Penn State Extension, the ABCs of microgreens - the seed-density tool asking for the germinability of the grower's own batch, which is why a permanent per-crop germination score does not exist.
• Practice, four beginner pages audited 2026-08-12 as a record of what is recommended rather than as evidence, and the source of the list counts. Utah State Extension, listed above, names four of the same crops as examples rather than as a starter ranking and is deliberately not counted among them: Urban Harvest Lab, listing radish, pea, sunflower, broccoli and mustard with a reason for each and warning that mucilaginous chia, cress and basil are hard to spread and mold-prone; Wind River Greens, listing sunflower, pea and radish, warning that crowded wet sunflower can mold and that cilantro needs cracking or pre-hulling, and using outcome language without a denominator; Garden UK, listing pea, radish, sunflower and broccoli and using "taste good enough" as an explicit starter criterion; and CityRooted, an affiliate page ranking on speed, flavor, yield and cost. None publishes crop-level sales figures, and none links a forgiveness claim to a comparative trial.