Indoor Microgreens Farming and Seasonality in the UK
Do the seasons in the UK affect indoor microgreens growing? In a nutshell, yes they do! Unless you have large facility that uses buckets loads of electricity to heat and cool your growing space to the exact same temperature 24/7, year round, then a change in seasonal temperature will affect your grows.
I’m writing this post today because, firstly, it’s May in the UK (the time of year when temperatures notably increase from those of a month or so ago) and also, if you’re new to microgreens farming it’s always useful to know what to expect with a change in season. It certainly surprised me during my first summer and winter!
Temperature is the environmental condition that has the most affect on the growth of your microgreens. Hence why we need to heat our grow rooms during the colder months of the year. Too cold and the growth of your microgreens will slow right down and can even stop, then as temperature increases, so does the speed at which your crops grow.
This is useful to know as you may need to adapt your planting plans with a season change. As always with microgreens farming, check in with your own plants regularly and make sure you keep detailed records of your grow cycles. That way you’ll be able to quickly notice any changes and adapt things accordingly.
My Sunflower Shoot Example
If you grow sunflower shoots in your farm, you’ll know how bitter thay start to taste once they start to grow their true leaves. Sunflower shoots should therefore be harvested before these leaves appear. I noticed last week in my farm, Nell’s Urban Greens, that these leaves were appearing around 2 days before my harvest day. The first time this has happened since last summer! I’ve now adapted my planting plan to sow my sunflower trays two days later - which is good news, as the shorter grow cycle now frees up extra room for more crops and makes my small grow space more productive! I love summer growing!
Click here if you’d like to know how to grow perfectly succulent sunflowers.
So if you’ve noticed recently that by harvest day your pea shoots are getting more tendrilly, your radish is losing its colour or your coriander’s seed leaves are turning a bit yellow, then their growth has likely sped up and they’re going beyond their optimum grow cycle length. Just move your planting day and it should tune them right back in.
Electricity Saving - make the most of the summer!
My advice to everyone who I help set up their own microgreens farm is to keep your business overheads as low as possible, especially to start with. This business can be set up and running profitably for years on a shoestring, so no need to spend cash unnecessarily.
Using elecrtricity for heating up or cooling down your grow space is expensive in the UK. It’s therefore a no brainer to use the warmer summer months to your advantage as much as possible.
Here’s how I do it at my farm:
✔ From May to September(ish), I don’t heat or dehumidify my grow room (unless absolutely necessary). Opening windows during the summer massively helps with keeping the humidity down and my Grow House naturally heats up to 20 - 23C when temperatures are 16C + outside.
✔ My Grow house is heavily insulated, which is great at keeping the heat in during the winter, but also helps to prevent it getting too hot in the there on our hotter summer days.
Current scenes in the Grow House this morning! Naturally perfect temperature and humidity :)
And this is another advantage of keeping your microgreens operation small and at home, you can regularly check the conditions in your grow room and adapt them accordingly if needed. It keeps it lean and doesn’t use unnecessary electricity.
When farming microgreens commercially, the more consistent you can keep your grow room temperature, the more consistent your grow cycles will be. And consistent grow cycles mean you’ll know exactly when to sow each of your crops to be ready on a certain day for supplying. This is what you’re aiming for.
But don’t let small variations in temperature and humidity worry you too much. If you don’t overfill your grow room to bursting, and you have plenty of air flow in there, the greens can take it. An the more growing experience you get in your space, the more you’ll know how low and high you can go to maintain your grow cycle lengths and quality of your crops.
Even as an indoor grower, try and use the natural seasons to your advantage as much as possible. It’s more energy efficient, which your bottom line will always thank you for.
Hi! I’m Amy Wright and I run my own microgreens farm in Leeds , UK.
I also teach people how to set up their own home based microgreens business, specifically in the UK.
If you’re keen to get started growing your first microgreens crops and selling them to your first paying customers, let me teach you how.