Growing micro-greens on cotton wool

DATE: 2017-09-10

AUTHOR: John L. Godlee

Last year I bought a packet of micro-greens at the Botanic Gardens and tried to grow them on tissue paper in a dish but found that the tissue paper would dry out too much while I was out at work. I remembered a science experiment from primary school where we grew cress in an egg shell stuffed with cotton wool so I thought I would try that, hoping that it would be more absorbent.

I made a bed of cotton wool in a dish about 5 cm deep, then watered it until the wool was saturated but not so there were pools of water. Then sprinkled on the seeds:

Cotton wool

Cotton wool with seeds

After 3 days they had all germinated and by 10 days they were ready to harvest with a pair of scissors!

Germinated seeds

Growing seeds macro

Just before harvesting