Microgreens World

Is it really possible to make your seed soak cut Salmonella and still leave you a crop? One new study says it depends on the seed.

Here is the problem. Everything that makes a soak harder on bacteria can also be harder on the seed. Kill rate and germination pull in opposite directions, and most soak claims only show you one side.

Researchers tested a plant-based soak on five brassica seeds. Fifteen minutes in the soak, then fourteen days in organic soil. Seed counts fell. But when they looked at what happened to the seed itself, the crops did not all come out the same.

One thing you can use today: when anyone shows you a soak result, ask for two numbers. How much did it cut, and what did it do to germination and yield? A soak that gives you only one is half a test.

And it is one hurdle in a food safety plan, not the plan.

The issue has the five crops, the numbers on both sides, and which one paid the price: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/october-23-2026

On October 7, the FDA changed one sentence on an open Salmonella outbreak page.

The outbreak had been tied to broccoli sprouts. The update now reads "broccoli sprouts and microgreens grown from a contaminated seed lot."

The lot was W4105. It was sold as garden seed.

To be fair to microgreens, they grow far fewer bacteria than sprouts. A 2014 USDA study grew both from the same contaminated radish seed. The microgreens came out safer. Not safe. The bacteria still multiplied.

So here's a question to answer before a chef asks it. If a seed lot got named tomorrow, could you show which of your trays came from it?

If the honest answer is a drawer of seed bags, that's the part I built a fix for. My food safety guide now comes with the Seed Lot Record, a phone app for your seed records. You log each lot at the bench, even with no signal, and snap up to three photos of the bag. When a lot gets named, you look it up instead of digging through storage.

The guide, eight templates, the seed SOPs, and the app are $97, with a 30-day guarantee.
https://microgreensworld.com/mfsg-0624/

Is it really possible for a one-person microgreens farm to answer a recall notice in five minutes? It is. It takes one line on a tray record. Here is what the FDA's two open sprout investigations show.

Two outbreaks are open right now. Both got traced back to a seed lot. Neither FDA page names the company that supplied the seed.

Broccoli: 32 sick in six states as of October 9, three in hospital. Lot W4105. Recalls from EAK Distribution, Eden Brothers and Gardeners Basics.

Alfalfa: 76 sick in 16 states as of October 1, six in hospital. Lot SAL2-24JB. Berlin Seeds recalled 950 pounds of it, and the lot code is printed only on the 5- and 50-pound bags.

So the question for you is simple. If a notice came out tomorrow with a lot number on it, could you say which trays that seed went into?

Write the lot code on every tray record. Start today. It costs nothing, and it is the one thing that turns a scary headline into a five-minute check.

The lot numbers, the recall dates, and what each FDA page tells growers are in this week's digest: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/october-16-2026

Share this with a grower who buys seed online.

Happy National Farmers Day.

Big farm or one shelf in a spare room, it’s the same job. You plant a seed, and you take care of it until it feeds somebody.

A lot of you reading this grow microgreens for your family, your neighbors, or a few local restaurants. You count. Today is yours too.

So tell me, what’s on your trays right now? Post a photo if you have one. I’d love to see them.

A third company just recalled broccoli seed for possible Salmonella. Gardeners Basics (Waltham 29 Broccoli Sprouting Seeds, 1 lb) joins EAK Distribution and Eden Brothers.

If you grow microgreens or sprouts, pull your broccoli seed packets and check them against the FDA notices. Stop using any seed that's listed, and don't eat anything grown from it.

The FDA says the Gardeners Basics seed was linked to a sprout grower in a multistate illness investigation. No illnesses had been reported to the company as of Oct. 6.

Recall notices and the full story are in this week's digest: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/october-9-2026/

Share this with a grower who buys seed online. Gardeners Basics sold on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and TikTok Shop.

Photo: FDA recall notice

Quick one for the farmers here. The Northeast Farmers Fund is taking applications until Tuesday, October 14.

It can help with equipment, processing, and marketing costs. This is the first application period, and it's rolling, so don't wait for the last day.

Check the fund's own page for eligibility before you apply. We don't want anyone spending an evening on an application they don't qualify for.

Also in this week's digest: a Colorado program that reimburses up to half the cost of an intern (up to $5,000, closes November 2), plus a vendor scam warning. Full issue: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/october-9-2026/

Know a grower in the Northeast? Tag them.

If you've had root rot show up
in a tray you did nothing to cause,
look at your water before you look at your seed.

A student team grew amaranth microgreens in mini hydroponic tanks to study a Pythium root rot. Then their control tanks started rotting too.

Ten trials. Two years. The controls kept showing root rot the team had not caused.

In the last trial, they disinfected the equipment and sterilized the water three different ways. The controls stayed clean. The authors' conclusion: municipal tap water was likely bringing it in.

That's a lead, not a finding. It's a small student study, and the last trial changed several things at once, so it can't tell you which step did the work.

You can still run a cheap version on your own bench. This part is our suggestion, not the paper's: split your next seeding, one tray on straight tap water and one on water you've treated, everything else the same. If the rot only shows up on one side, you've learned something about your own water.

Which three treatments they used, what they suggest commercial growers consider, and where we'd read the result with care are in this week's Microgreens World digest.

This week's issue: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/october-2-2026

If you grow microgreens under LEDs and you're pricing a new fixture, read this before you trust the scale on harvest day.

A team in Russia grew radish microgreens under two 50-watt LED fixtures. One of them raised fresh yield by 68 percent. On a scale, that looks like a clear winner.

Then they dried the plants. Most of the gain was water.

Fresh weight tells you how much water the crop is holding. Dry weight tells you how much plant you grew. A light can move one and barely touch the other.

You can run the same check yourself. Cut a small sample from each tray, weigh it, dry it in a low oven until the weight stops falling, and weigh it again. Compare the dry numbers, not the fresh ones.

Which light won on fresh weight, what happened to the shoots you sell, and three reasons to read the study with care are in this week's Microgreens World digest. Link in the first comment.

First comment: This week's issue: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/september-25-2026

Is it really possible to quadruple the iron in a tray of microgreens without giving anything up?

Penn State put five iron sources against an untreated control, at three rates, on radish and pea. One source did the job. One did nothing at all, and the reason it did nothing is a detail about tray plumbing that will matter to anyone running a shallow reservoir.

Then there is the part almost nobody measures. Something else in the tissue moved while the iron was going up. It moved down, and in one crop it moved down by 62 per cent.

The frame worth keeping even if you never click: biofortification is a trade, not an addition. You are not adding a mineral to a plant. You are changing what the plant takes up, and the plant does not have unlimited room.

Which means if anyone runs an iron panel for you, that panel should not stop at iron.

Which source won, which one failed and why, what fell, and how far it fell in each crop. All in this week's issue: https://microgreensworld.com/microgreens-weekly-digest/september-18-2026/

Sept is the one month a year I spend a couple of dollars a packet for cheap toss them in and wait seeds. They really pay off! Remember not to w**d out the new starts in the spring!