Photo credit: Susan Reimer

While at Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville, getting lessons from education coordinator Gene Sumi on how to safely grow my own bean sprouts, I decided to try my hand at microgreens while I was at it.

Talk about your kitchen garden....I grew both "crops" on my kitchen counter.

You can read about the results of the bean sprout experiment in my gardening column Thursday in The Sun. The mung bean seeds exploded, but the chickpeas and the sunflower seeds were a disapointment.

There was no disappointment in growing the microgreens.

I picked up a growing kit that included two trays, a bag of seed-starting medium, two plastic, vented domes and a drainage tray. It cost about $15. Plus three bags of microgreen seeds for $3.29 each: broccoli, purple radish and amaranth red army.

After soaking a teaspoon of the broccoli seeds and a teaspoon of the radish seeds overnight, I poured some seed-starting material in the trays, wet it down and gently spread the seeds on top of the mixture. Then I closed the vents on the tops of the domes and covered the trays.

Every morning, I misted the seeds with a spray bottle. They germinated almost instantly. In less than a week, I was able to snip off a couple of handfuls of greens. The radish was spicy, as you might expect, and the broccoli was pretty flavorful.

I thought about making a salad, but decided on sandwiches instead.  Just as I did with the sprouts, I put the greens together with some avocado, tomato and some crusty bread.

The perfect summer sandwich.