How to Grow Lettuce Microgreens in 5 Easy Steps

There’s nothing better than having access to fresh, nutrient-dense salad greens that practically grow themselves. And if you’re new to growing microgreens, or gardening in general, lettuce microgreens are the perfect place to start.

In this article, I’ll show you how to grow lettuce or salad mix microgreens. I consider these one of the most basic microgreens you can grow, making them perfect for a beginner.

Practically any plant can be grown as a microgreen, which is just the younger cousin of baby greens. Typically harvested around eight to twenty days after planting, microgreens are the quickest turnaround crop you’ll ever grow in your garden.

Vivian Romaine Lettuce

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Vivian Romaine Lettuce Seeds

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Gourmet Baby Greens Mesclun Lettuce

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Gourmet Baby Greens Mesclun Lettuce Seeds

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Little Gem Mini-Romaine Lettuce

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Little Gem Mini-Romaine Lettuce Seeds

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What You’ll Need

You can find a lot of these materials around your house, but if you want to invest in some equipment, things like grow lights and trays will be beneficial in the long term.

Seeds

Always use a quality seed to begin with. I like using an ounce of lettuce seed, as they are very small and cover a standard tray. Don’t use any less or you will have a sparse amount of greens.

There are many varieties to choose from. Try any of these:

• Ezrilla Leaf Lettuce Seeds: A compact, uniform frilly lettuce.
• Brentwood Leaf Lettuce Seeds: Bright burgundy, frilly, and glossy leaves are the highlight of this variety.
• Red Sails Leaf Lettuce Seeds: A baby greens favorite and An All-America Selections Winner. Soft, buttery red leaves with great flavor.
• Buttercrunch Butterhead Lettuce Seeds: All-America Selections Winner, light green, flavorful lettuce.
• Great Lakes 118 Crisphead Lettuce Seeds: A crisp lettuce, also known as ‘Iceberg’, has been improved in this version 118 from the 1960s.
• Vivian Romaine Lettuce Seeds: A Crisp emerald green lettuce with vigorous growth, producing tender greens in a few weeks.
• Chef’s Choice Mesclun Lettuce Seeds: A tasty salad blend, preferred by chefs. Includes lettuces ‘Tango’ 10%, ‘Royal Oak Leaf’ 10%, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ 25%, ‘Red Sails’ 5%, ‘Black Seeded Simpson’ 10%, ‘Grand Rapids TBR’ 10%, and other greens including arugula 20%, green endive 5%, mizuna mustard 5%.

Containers

Any shallow containers with drainage holes will do. Alternatively, use two standard planting trays (one for growing and one for covering), which you can clean and reuse for the next round of lettuce microgreens.

We recommend Epic 6-Cell Seed Starting Trays and Germination Domes & Bottom Trays for a long-lasting option, but any shallow sowing tray will work.

Growing Medium

A seed-starting mix is ideal for microgreens thanks to its fine texture. To make your own, use an equal ratio of potting soil to rehydrated coco coir, which has excellent moisture-holding capacity and good drainage.

Grow Lights

For indoor planting, grow lights work best. Overhead lighting ensures the microgreens grow upwards and evenly rather than stretching toward the sunlight from a window.

For beginners and advanced gardeners, we recommend Small Epic Seed Starting Grow Light or the Standard Epic Seed Starting Grow Light.

The trays can also be placed on a sunny windowsill and rotated every few days to ensure the germinating seed doesn’t lean toward the light.

Extras

You will also need a spray bottle for misting seeds and a pair of scissors or garden shears for harvesting. Use a herb shaker for sowing the seed to ensure even distribution.

How to Grow Lettuce Microgreens

Use these steps to make sure you grow the perfect microgreens, starting with sowing. Lettuce seeds do not need soaking beforehand. In fact, it’s not advisable to soak these small seeds as they will be difficult to handle if wet.

Step 1: Plant

Your first task is to prepare your trays properly. Proper tray prep will help you avoid all sorts of issues as your microgreens grow.

My technique is to add four cups of water to the bottom of the tray, then fill with the growing medium. You don’t want any large chunks of bark, stone, or other debris. The smoother and flatter the surface, the better.

For lettuce mix, I recommend spreading one ounce of seed evenly over the surface. If you want extremely even spreading, you can use an old herb shaker, but even a simple drinking glass will work well. Avoid clumping or uneven distribution of seeds, which will cause poor growth in those sections as the seeds germinate.

Step 2: Cover

Mist the tray once more with your spray bottle and place another propagation tray on top. Leave it in a warm, dark area for one to two days, misting once or twice a day as needed. Be sure to check your trays daily for signs of mold growth, which is one of the biggest issues with lettuce microgreens.

After two days, most of your seeds should have germinated. Keep misting for another two to four days and grow your greens under the blackout dome. This period is crucial to get the greens up to a specific height before you take the dome off and expose them to light.

If you’re worried that your lettuce looks yellow, don’t be! Remember, it’s sunlight that turns a plant’s leaves green as it begins to photosynthesize.

Step 3: Grow

After four days, you can take the blackout dome off and expose your greens to the light. Growing outdoors works fine, but I prefer to keep mine indoors under grow lights to ensure I have a consistent environment for growing my microgreens. They will turn green after about 36 hours and will only keep growing taller and more healthy as you let them age.

You’ll know your lettuce microgreens are ready to harvest when the first signs of the true leaves develop. The first leaves that develop on your plants are actually the seed leaves already formed inside the seed hull.

You can either harvest when you see the first sign of true leaves, or wait until these true leaves grow up a bit. Your yield will increase, but so will the time it takes to grow your tray.

Step 4: Harvest

There are many techniques for harvesting your lettuce microgreens. Some use knives, some use scissors, some commercial growers have specialized harvesting machinery. I find that grass shears work quite well, because the cutting blade is parallel to the surface of the tray.

Take care not to pull the roots out of the soil, and make sure to sacrifice about half an inch of stem to ensure you don’t accidentally harvest any debris or seed hulls. The last thing you want to do is have to wash your microgreens. It damages them slightly and also decreases their storage life by about 30%.

Step 5: Store

Lettuce microgreens should be picked fresh and not stored for any length of time. Should you want to save some, add them to a Ziploc bag with a wet paper towel and keep them refrigerated for a few days.