Equipment reviews

Nobody makes a fan for microgreens. The only airflow figure ever published for this crop would take 4.1 of the biggest clip fan here, or 11.7 duct fans. The anemometer that would settle it costs less than the fan.

Seed rates here run 1.1 to 450 grams a tray, a 409-fold range. One scale covers all of it for about $19, and neither it nor a $460 balance publishes the one specification that would let you trust either.

A $0.92 container has to save three trays of turnip seed to pay for itself, or a tenth of a tray of barley grass. Nothing sold as airtight publishes a test, and a seal locks in whatever state the seed is already in.

This site tells you to read the medium at seed depth. Every instrument sold for the job reads air, and of ten product pages opened, exactly one publishes where its sensor actually sits.

What a timer saves you depends entirely on the wattage of the thing it switches, and the three guides that recommend one never mention load. That same missing number is also the safety number.

Single-use mats run $1.18 to $2.90 a tray. The median seed cost across the 50 costed crops in this directory is $1.08, so for 27 of them the cheapest mat costs more than the seed. No study establishes one best medium.

A 48 by 24 by 72 inch adjustable wire rack from $89.99 is the whole answer for most growers. Adding tiers to the same frame trades away the light distance extension guidance asks for, by the sellers' own clearance numbers.

No retail microgreen container has a published shelf-life result at a stated temperature. Deli cups run 10 cents, clamshells start at 16.5 cents, and the two things that actually move the number are how cold the fridge is and how dry the crop went in.

A perforated tray over a solid one, filled by hand, from about $11. No source publishes water volume per tray per day for any crop or any product, so every cup figure you have been given is one grower's habit.

Pod count is holes for separated mature plants, not dense tray area. A $30 tray kit out-produces a $250 pod garden for microgreens, and nobody has published the comparison either way.

Buy an ordinary white LED strip sized to your shelf, put it on a timer, and spend the difference on seed. Then measure your own tray, because no fixture sold for microgreens publishes a reading across one.

The first buying decision in this category is not which salad spinner. It is whether to wash at all, and for microgreens you are storing or selling, three extension services say do not.

A second 1020 tray and a few pounds of weight gives darkness, moisture retention and the seed-to-medium contact a dome cannot. Even the sellers say to take the dome off.

Two matched 1020s, one with holes and one without, from $5.78. Nobody has published reuse-cycle evidence showing when a premium tray pays for itself, and BPA-free is not a food-contact certification.