Buying and eating

Learn which crops top a US grower survey, a global market report and a seed retailer's best sellers to see the most popular microgreens three ways.

Bronze fennel, red sorrel, and shiso can cost far more than common crops. See which are the most expensive microgreens to buy or grow, with dated prices.

Compare the best potting soil for microgreens by ingredients, bag size, trays filled per bag, and cost per tray, plus problems to expect from each mix.

Herb-family crops take a median 19 days against 11.5 for everything else, and 8 of the 9 hardest crops are herbs. They also sow lighter, so the premium is bench time, not seed.

Nearly every beginner list names radish, pea and sunflower. Pea and sunflower are the only two of that set not rated beginner: both carry high mold risk, both need a soak, and both sow at six times the median seed rate.

Across every observed price, what a shopper can actually pay spans 2-fold while sellers quote across 8.3. Farm-direct covers almost the whole range by itself, because pack size decides the price and the channel does not.

No regulator anywhere sets a daily microgreen intake. The only weighed serving published is 2.5 grams; the only daily-feeding trials used 28 to 30. Nobody has reconciled those two numbers.

Nobody has measured how much juice a microgreen tray gives. The one published figure is a seller's, for wheatgrass, on a tray 23 percent larger than a 1020. Rescaled, a 240 mL glass is three quarters of a tray.

In the only full published tray budget, labels, packaging and marketing are 50 to 60 percent of what a tray costs to produce. Growing the plant is 17 to 23 percent, and the seed is under 10.