At GOE Urban Farming we try not to be part of the problem. Most microgreens in chain groceries are packaged in plastic that ends up in landfills.
We've compiled a lis of alternatives, now with realistic common stock sizes. Dimensions are approximate external dimensions; capacities are nominal fluid ounces, so the appropriate produce weight depends heavily on cut style, density, and moisture.
Several practical alternatives can replace PET plastic clamshells while still letting shoppers visually assess fresh-cut vegetables. The most useful formats are fiber trays with a clear lid or lidding film, paperboard window packs, transparent compostable pouches, clear PLA containers, and returnable rigid packs.
Gardeners' Blog
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Microgreens: A good source of nutrients, no panacea
We've compiled some recommendations regarding the nutrition value of microgreens. The bottom line is that while microgreens are a great source of vitamins and minerals, they are not a replacement for a diverse diet.
Rookie Mistakes
Many beginners think, as long as there's water and nutrients, the lettuce will automatically be healthy. But they're wrong. Here are seven mistakes beginners make in hydroponics =that can ruin your lettuce; similar issues attend other varieties.
1. Too High in Nutrients
Just because the PPM is high doesn't mean the lettuce will grow faster. If it's too much, it can stress or burn the roots and leaves.
2. Not Checking the pH
Even if the nutrients are right, if the pH isn't okay, the lettuce may still struggle to absorb the nutrients.
3. Leaving the nutrient solution unattended ☀️
Especially in tropical climates. When the water is too hot, the dissolved oxygen decreases and stress on the roots increases.
4. Lack of Oxygen
Especially in DFT/DWC systems, aeration is crucial. Healthy roots need oxygen too—not just nutrients and water.
5. No Shade Protection
Lettuce is a cool-season crop. If it's exposed to extreme heat, it can bolt, lose its leaves, or slow growth.
6. Too Many Plants
We think more lettuce on the surface means more harvest. But overcrowding can mean poor airflow, more competition, and higher risk of disease.
7. Only Checking the Plant, Not the ROOTS ????
Sometimes the lettuce looks okay on the surface, but the roots are stressed. Regularly check the roots for discoloration, slime, bad smell, or poor development.
Beginner Tip: Don't just ask "what fertilizer should I use?" Learn to monitor pH, EC/PPM, water temperature, oxygen, light, airflow, and root health.
In hydroponics, it's not just "planting in water." You're managing an entire growing environment.
Adapted from Farm Diaries at Facebook.
1. Too High in Nutrients
Just because the PPM is high doesn't mean the lettuce will grow faster. If it's too much, it can stress or burn the roots and leaves.
2. Not Checking the pH
Even if the nutrients are right, if the pH isn't okay, the lettuce may still struggle to absorb the nutrients.
3. Leaving the nutrient solution unattended ☀️
Especially in tropical climates. When the water is too hot, the dissolved oxygen decreases and stress on the roots increases.
4. Lack of Oxygen
Especially in DFT/DWC systems, aeration is crucial. Healthy roots need oxygen too—not just nutrients and water.
5. No Shade Protection
Lettuce is a cool-season crop. If it's exposed to extreme heat, it can bolt, lose its leaves, or slow growth.
6. Too Many Plants
We think more lettuce on the surface means more harvest. But overcrowding can mean poor airflow, more competition, and higher risk of disease.
7. Only Checking the Plant, Not the ROOTS ????
Sometimes the lettuce looks okay on the surface, but the roots are stressed. Regularly check the roots for discoloration, slime, bad smell, or poor development.
Beginner Tip: Don't just ask "what fertilizer should I use?" Learn to monitor pH, EC/PPM, water temperature, oxygen, light, airflow, and root health.
In hydroponics, it's not just "planting in water." You're managing an entire growing environment.
Adapted from Farm Diaries at Facebook.
A fun take on hydroponic history
A colleague recently received this message from an L.A.-based writer. A quick read, amusing and informative.
Hi Dr M...,
There's something about growing food in soil that intuitively feels natural. Hydroponics, by comparison, can sound technological. But the ideas behind it are much older than the word itself.
The word “hydroponics” is less than a hundred years old, from the Greek hydro for water and ponos for labor. In the 1930s, Berkeley plant physiologist William Gericke made headlines growing enormous tomato vines in tanks of nutrient-rich water, their roots directly in the solution, no soil at all.
Outside Mexico City, in a place called Xochimilco, the Mexica built chinampas: extraordinarily fertile growing plots raised out of shallow lakes, surrounded by canals and replenished with nutrient-rich sediment from the water.
People still farm them today, five hundred years later. It's a brilliant system. Technically, though, it's not hydroponics. The plants still grow in soil. The canals keep that soil extraordinarily well supplied with water and nutrients.
For a closer match, travel halfway around the world to Bangladesh. For generations, farmers there have built floating gardens called dhap out of water hyacinth and other organic matter. Crops grow directly in the floating beds. When monsoon floods submerge the land for months at a time, farmers figured out how to grow on the water instead.
The images of these systems are incredible. But what strikes me more than the methods themselves is the ingenuity behind them. People were solving the problem long before anyone thought to give it a name.
For thousands of years, people have looked at the place they lived, the land and water they had available, and figured out how to grow within those constraints. They adapted the way they grew to the way they lived.
Over the last century, our growing cities faced the same basic challenge. And we came up with almost the opposite solution. Instead of figuring out how to keep farms close to us, we figured out how not to need them close at all.
For four decades, from 1910 to 1950, Los Angeles County ranked #1 in agricultural production among every county in America. In the most recent Census of Agriculture, it ranked #817.
Today, our most abundant crop may be aspiring actors. The land didn't become less valuable for growing food.It simply became more valuable for everything else. Studio lots included. Refrigeration, highways, and an increasingly sophisticated supply chain made that possible.
Today lettuce can be grown a thousand miles away, harvested, cooled, packaged, trucked, warehoused, put on a grocery store shelf, and brought home. And yet, somehow, that feels perfectly normal. But normal and natural aren't necessarily the same thing.
I think we've simply confused familiar with natural. Growing a plant a few feet from where you'll eat it, giving its roots the water and nutrients it needs directly, doesn't strike me as particularly unnatural. At least not compared to the alternative.
Maybe the next evolution is using what we know now to make growing fit the way we live now: on a rooftop, a balcony, a patio, or a little patch of concrete.
Growing food close to where we eat it isn't a new idea. Maybe what's changing is simply our idea of where growing belongs.
J...
Hi Dr M...,
There's something about growing food in soil that intuitively feels natural. Hydroponics, by comparison, can sound technological. But the ideas behind it are much older than the word itself.
The word “hydroponics” is less than a hundred years old, from the Greek hydro for water and ponos for labor. In the 1930s, Berkeley plant physiologist William Gericke made headlines growing enormous tomato vines in tanks of nutrient-rich water, their roots directly in the solution, no soil at all.
Outside Mexico City, in a place called Xochimilco, the Mexica built chinampas: extraordinarily fertile growing plots raised out of shallow lakes, surrounded by canals and replenished with nutrient-rich sediment from the water.
People still farm them today, five hundred years later. It's a brilliant system. Technically, though, it's not hydroponics. The plants still grow in soil. The canals keep that soil extraordinarily well supplied with water and nutrients.
For a closer match, travel halfway around the world to Bangladesh. For generations, farmers there have built floating gardens called dhap out of water hyacinth and other organic matter. Crops grow directly in the floating beds. When monsoon floods submerge the land for months at a time, farmers figured out how to grow on the water instead.
The images of these systems are incredible. But what strikes me more than the methods themselves is the ingenuity behind them. People were solving the problem long before anyone thought to give it a name.
For thousands of years, people have looked at the place they lived, the land and water they had available, and figured out how to grow within those constraints. They adapted the way they grew to the way they lived.
Over the last century, our growing cities faced the same basic challenge. And we came up with almost the opposite solution. Instead of figuring out how to keep farms close to us, we figured out how not to need them close at all.
For four decades, from 1910 to 1950, Los Angeles County ranked #1 in agricultural production among every county in America. In the most recent Census of Agriculture, it ranked #817.
Today, our most abundant crop may be aspiring actors. The land didn't become less valuable for growing food.It simply became more valuable for everything else. Studio lots included. Refrigeration, highways, and an increasingly sophisticated supply chain made that possible.
Today lettuce can be grown a thousand miles away, harvested, cooled, packaged, trucked, warehoused, put on a grocery store shelf, and brought home. And yet, somehow, that feels perfectly normal. But normal and natural aren't necessarily the same thing.
I think we've simply confused familiar with natural. Growing a plant a few feet from where you'll eat it, giving its roots the water and nutrients it needs directly, doesn't strike me as particularly unnatural. At least not compared to the alternative.
Maybe the next evolution is using what we know now to make growing fit the way we live now: on a rooftop, a balcony, a patio, or a little patch of concrete.
Growing food close to where we eat it isn't a new idea. Maybe what's changing is simply our idea of where growing belongs.
J...
India's Tamil Nadu state creates microgreens program
On Thursday, August 6, the government of Tamil Nadu, home of one of the leading universities in microgreens research, presented its 2026 Agriculture Budget in the state Assembly and announced something no government has done at this scale: a dedicated Tamil Nadu Micro Greens Scheme. Officials described it as a first-of-its-kind programme built to popularise microgreens at the household level. Not as a garnish. As nutrition policy. Source: Microgreens World.
Time to re-order again
Time to re-order: GOE artwork ready for new campaign
Parasitic diarrhea? Not from CEA!
According to AmHydro, a manufacturer of hydroponic equipment:
"You may have been seeing the news that a parasite called Cyclospora, known to cause explosive diarrhea, has been detected in more than 4,000 cases in at least 34 states. As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention look to contain the outbreak, they have warned people to take special caution when purchasing leafy greens and other vegetables.
Why isn’t CEA produce a risk for cyclospora infection?
The parasite is contracted by eating food exposed to human feces. It is not transmitted by human to human contact. It is not even transmitted when an infected person handles food.
The most common occurrences are related to people relieving themselves outdoors near farms. The fecal matter can run off toward produce due to irrigation, rainfall, or other causes.
CEA produce simply does not carry this risk."
"You may have been seeing the news that a parasite called Cyclospora, known to cause explosive diarrhea, has been detected in more than 4,000 cases in at least 34 states. As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention look to contain the outbreak, they have warned people to take special caution when purchasing leafy greens and other vegetables.
Why isn’t CEA produce a risk for cyclospora infection?
The parasite is contracted by eating food exposed to human feces. It is not transmitted by human to human contact. It is not even transmitted when an infected person handles food.
The most common occurrences are related to people relieving themselves outdoors near farms. The fecal matter can run off toward produce due to irrigation, rainfall, or other causes.
CEA produce simply does not carry this risk."
No Sun. No Soil. No Problem!!!
Over the past 2 years, I’ve chosen to emphasize the growth of a variety of microgreens - tiny versions of the most popular herbs and vegetables - including collards, lettuce, radish,sunflower, sweet pea shoots, basil, cilantro, etc. I still grow leafy greens, but microgreens are more profitable and beneficial use of my time and resources - seed to harvest in 7 to 10 days.
Most of us know that broccoli is a nutritional powerhouse - it’s good for us. It’s rich in vitamins A, B, C, K and a bunch of other nutrients the body needs to stay healthy. It takes about 85 days from seed to harvest outdoors or hydroponically.
Or, you can opt for broccoli microgreens that grow to harvest in 10-14 days and contain up to 40 times the vitamin and nutrients compared to mature broccoli. The same vitamin and nutrient profile exists for mature varieties of kale and arugula microgreens as well. It’s yet another example where bigger isn’t always better.
ROI for hydroponic gardening exceeds that of traditional farming.
Hydroponic farming in the USA delivers substantially higher annual returns and efficiency compared to traditional agricultural capital investments in farmland, though it comes with higher startup costs and complexity [1][3][4][5][6].
Return on Investment (ROI) Comparison
- Traditional U.S. agriculture/farmland: Averages a 7–12% annual rate of return, driven by crop income and long-term land appreciation [11][12][13].
- Hydroponic farming: ROI typically ranges 20–35% annually for efficiently managed operations, especially those producing high-value crops. Reported profit margins and payback periods are superior due to increased crop cycles and premium pricing, though this is contingent on scale and market access [14][15][16].
Key Efficiency and Yield Differences
-Hydroponics:
- Can produce up to 10–20 times the yield per square foot versus traditional farms, largely by enabling vertical growing and year-round production in controlled environments [3][9].
- Uses up to 90% less water and maximizes space, reducing risks from weather and pests [3][2][8].
- Consistently delivers higher returns per unit area, but demands significant capital, technical skill, and ongoing energy inputs [1][6][4].
- Traditional farming:
- Relies on climate, soil, and seasons, leading to variable yields and greater land and water use [6][2][4].
- Lower capital requirements to start, but faces sustainability and efficiency challenges, especially in land-scarce or water-stressed regions [1][6][4].
Environmental Sustainability
- Hydroponic systems: Offer improved sustainability, reduce soil erosion and chemical use, and are adaptable to urban or harsh environments [1][3][4].
- Traditional farming: Can contribute to environmental pressures without sustainable practices [6][4].
Cost and Investment Considerations
- Hydroponics: Higher initial costs can be offset by greater long-term returns and resource efficiency—especially beneficial in urban/vertical farming [1][6][4].
- Traditional agriculture: Lower barriers to entry, but potentially higher operational costs and yield variability over time [6][4].
In summary: Hydroponic farming offers much higher financial returns and productivity compared to traditional U.S. farm investments, as well as stronger resilience and efficiency, but at the cost of greater capital and operational complexity [1][3][4][6][5].
Sources
Gardening in Space - Yours!
OK, if you came here from a link elsewhere among our publications, you might be feeling that we led you (far) astray, but we're in hope you'll forgive the excursion. After all, if gardening isn't fun, why would we do it?
What we have in mind is another excursion, into "space" you already control. Why not start an indoor garden?Start with a single tray of microgreens or even a flower pot with a few spinach seeds. Add basic nutrition for your family, and if you enjoy it and want to generate some additional income, consider expanding to more food for your family or even a small business.
Enjoy the rest of our gardening world.
Virginia indoor farm may be world's largest, for now
Pittsylvania, Virginia’s AeroFarms facility, operated by New Jersey-based indoor vertical farming company AeroFarms may be the largest of its kind in the world.
The 140,000-square-foot facility is a $42 million investment, located in Cane Creek Centre, a joint industrial park owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, Virginia
The 140,000-square-foot facility is a $42 million investment, located in Cane Creek Centre, a joint industrial park owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, Virginia
Growing Hope: Why Food Banks Should Invest in Microgreens and Local Hydroponics
These tiny, vibrant greens—nutrient-dense, fast-growing, and full of flavor—can play a powerful role in strengthening food security, community wellness, and local economies.
If you work with or support a food bank, I strongly encourage you to consider the potential of microgreens and small-scale hydroponic growing. Whether through donations, community partnerships, or even on-site production, this is a fresh solution worth exploring.
What Are Microgreens?
Microgreens are the tender young shoots of common vegetables and herbs—like broccoli, radish, peas, sunflower, or basil—harvested just after the first leaves appear. Though small, they’re concentrated in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants—often many times more than mature greens.
They’re also:
Easy to grow with minimal space
Ready to harvest in just 7–10 days
Long-lasting when kept cool
Versatile and flavorful
In short, microgreens are one of the simplest ways to introduce fresh, high-value nutrition into any food distribution system.
Why Microgreens Belong in Food Boxes
Microgreens address several critical gaps faced by food bank clients:
Nutritional Power: They offer dense vitamins and minerals in a small, manageable form—ideal for individuals with limited access to fresh produce.
Flavorful & Versatile: A pinch of microgreens adds brightness to soups, sandwiches, rice bowls, and more.
Dignity Through Freshness: Clients feel respected when receiving high-quality, fresh items—not just canned goods and shelf-stable food.
Many food bank customers who have received microgreens in the past express joy and gratitude for something that tastes “alive” and feels nourishing.
The Power of Local Growing
Because microgreens can be grown quickly in small trays under basic lighting or natural sunlight, they’re perfect for hyper-local production—even in urban or space-limited environments.
Imagine:
Home growers donating surplus from a sunny windowsill
Local entrepreneurs earning modest income from selling or donating
Community volunteers engaging in hands-on projects that promote food justice
Hydroponic systems—especially vertical or tabletop units—can make microgreen growing even more efficient and clean. With minimal infrastructure, your food bank could explore partnerships or even operate its own grow station.
Now consider having all these suppliers connected via the Internet, allowing the food bank to request specific commodities to balance diets that have in the past been limited to canned goods and government cheese.
Economic and Social Impact
Supporting microgreen and hydroponic projects helps food banks do more than feed people—it helps build community resilience:
Local Revenue Circulation: Dollars stay local when food is grown and shared nearby.
Microbusiness Opportunities: Seniors, students, and low-income residents can become growers and vendors.
Social Connection: Projects built around growing food promote collaboration, inclusion, and purpose.
Real Stories, Real Potential
While your food bank may not currently distribute microgreens, others around the country already do—with positive feedback from clients, donors, and volunteers alike. The success of those efforts proves that integrating fresh greens is possible, even with modest means.
Now is the perfect time to bring those benefits to your community.
Recommendation: Let’s Start the Conversation
If your food bank, community organization, or local government is interested in exploring a microgreens or hydroponics initiative—whether donation-based, volunteer-driven, or income-generating—I’d love to speak with you.
Together, we can develop a tailored, realistic plan to:
Build community engagement around healthy, local food
Identify local growers or train new ones
Design scalable production models for homes, schools, or small businesses
Connect microgreens to your distribution pipeline
Keep revenue in the local community as growers spend and invest near home
Please reach out to discuss how we can bring microgreens—and greater food sovereignty—to your organization and your neighbors.
Let’s grow something beautiful and nourishing together!
Recent Posts
- Microgreens: A good source of nutrients, no panacea
- Rookie Mistakes
- A fun take on hydroponic history
- India's Tamil Nadu state creates microgreens program
- Time to re-order again
- Time to re-order: GOE artwork ready for new campaign
- Parasitic diarrhea? Not from CEA!
- No Sun. No Soil. No Problem!!!
- ROI for hydroponic gardening exceeds that of traditional farming.
- Gardening in Space - Yours!
- Virginia indoor farm may be world's largest, for now
- Growing Hope: Why Food Banks Should Invest in Microgreens and Local Hydroponics
© 2026 GOE Urban Farming Inc