07/24/2023
~ A Tale of Two Sorrels ~
Red Veined Sorrel is one of the most difficult to perfect as a grower. One wrong move and you can ruin the whole thing. Let me tell you our story with the first sorrel we ever grew.
In late 2016, we were just learning how to grow microgreens with the intention of creating a business. Red veined sorrel being one of the most popular among chefs meant that we needed to learn how to do it.
We prepared our planting tray and excitedly opened the seeds we had gotten. Hmm, they weren't very big...
Being the complete newbies we were, looking at those tiny seeds made us reason that more was better. After all, they were SO small. 🧐 The general directions for all microgreens tells you to broadcast seeds thickly over growing media. Thickly? Boy, it was going to take a lot of seeds to make it thick. At this rate, we'd have to buy them more often.
After eagerly checking on them every day, we finally saw tails sprouting. LOTS of tails. Our rookie reaction was, that's great! What an awesome germination. We'd get a great crop out of this. Maybe sorrel wouldn't be so hard after all. While we were performing a little happy dance 💃 and patting ourselves on the back, the sorrel reached about an inch tall and completely stopped growing. 😮☹️
The moral of the story? Less is better, especially when it comes to seeding red veined sorrel. In fact, we barely use any seeds when spreading them out.
And no, it didn't take us 6 years to master this tricky green 😅
Thanks to Candy (a.k.a. Mama) and her tireless efforts to figure it all out, we learned what to do. Sorrel is challenging, particular about what it likes, and a slow grower in comparison to other microgreens. But you can do it with patience and careful watering.
There are plenty of other spectacular failures I could tell you about, but those are stories for another post. For anyone who's new to growing microgreens, I promise you'll be able to look back and laugh at your early trial and error days.
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