Tag: Food Growing

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How To Grow Micro-greens

Grow micro-greens at home with this easy guide! These teeny leaves are packed with flavour, are rich in potassium, iron, zinc, magnesium and copper. Grow them at home with this Seed Pantry guide. 🤩

Home » Food Growing
Micro-greens ready for harvest.

What are micro-greens?

Micro-greens is a fancy word for any leaves harvested from the seedlings of leafy salad greens, like rocket and pak choi, or herbs, like basil and coriander. You’ll find plenty of choice in the Seed Pantry food seeds range or in your monthly Grow Club boxes that are suitable, brassicas, salads, sunflowers… the shoots of broad beans, peas, as well as root crops such as radish and carrot are also delicious!

You can grow all micro-greens in the same way, sown into a compost and placed in a sunny windowsill indoors – all year round! Grown in just about anything, from seed trays to old yoghurt pots, they’ll be ready to harvest in just 1-2 weeks. If you plant seeds every few days then you’ll have a supply of tender shoots right the way through winter, so take a leaf out of Seed Pantry’s book and add a bonanza of vitamins, antioxidants and minerals such as iron, folic acid and potassium to your meals!

Which seeds should I sow?

Radish: Quick and easy to grow, the pretty red stems of radish shoots will add colour to your salads as well as a peppery kick. Try them in egg sandwiches and stir fries.

Harvest: 7 days

Spinach: These mild, nutrient packed leaves are ideal for salads, or stirred into a risotto. Tastes brilliant in an omelette with micro broccoli.

Harvest: 10 days

Beetroot: Their red-stemmed leaves add a splash of colour and a mild, earthy flavour to leafy salads. Delicious when sprinkled over grilled fish.

Harvest: 10 days

Mustards: Varieties such as mizuna, mibuna and mustard red frills all pack a spicy punch. The pretty, frilly or red-leaved varieties to add a sprinkling of interest to your stir-fry.

Harvest: 10 days

Basil: Much easier to grow than the adult plant, these highly flavoured micro-greens can be used in exactly the same way. Look out for purple varieties, such as the Seed Pantry Basil ‘rubin’ for extra colour.

Harvest: 10 days

Pea shoots: Tasting just like fresh peas, these sweet little tendrils are good in salads and stir fries, and they look lovely!

Harvest: 14 days

Sunflower shoots: With a slightly nutty taste and a pleasing crunch, sunflower shoots will make a great addition to almost any salad.

Harvest: 14 days

Coriander: A little slow to germinate, but these tiny flavour-packed leaves are well worth the rate. Fantastic as a garnish for curries, noodles and stir fries.

Harvest: 14 days

How to do it

  1. Cover the bottom of your container with an inch or two of compost, firming it lightly with your hand.
  2. Scatter a dense layer of seeds, evenly spaced, over the op of the soil; try to avoid clumps of seeds.
  3. Place your tray on a windowsill and keep them lightly watered using a mister or a fine watering can rose.
  4. Your greens should be ready to harvest in about a week, although it’ll be a little slower in the winter. To harvest, either snip them with a pair of scissors or pull them up from the base of the stem.

The Seed Pantry team 🌼

#SeedPantryGrowClub

WIN a lucky-dip addition to your next box by sharing your plant pictures with us on Instagram. Use the hashtag #SeedPantryGrowClub or tag us @seedpantry to enter.

Subscribe to the Grow Club box for flowers, food and herb seeds ready to sow each month… Curious? Come check out all of this month’s options!

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Spinach and Onion Puff Pastry Tart Recipe

The Seed Pantry Spinach ‘Perpetual’ has certainly lived up to it’s name, but we’re not complaining! We’ve been devising new and delicious ways to use up our continuous supply of fresh leafy greens…including this spinach and onion puff pastry tart recipe!

Home » Food Growing

Ingredients:

– 350-400g spinach
– 2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
– 1 onion, diced
– 1 garlic clove, chopped
– 1 tsp fresh thyme or parsley, chopped
– A packet of ready-rolled puff pastry
– 75g cheese (cheddar and feta work brilliantly)
– Freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of sea salt

How to do it

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a baking tray with a little of the oil.

– 350-400g Spinach

Tear out any tough stalks of Spinach and wash thoroughly. Place it into a saucepan with a tablespoon of water, cover and put over a medium heat to wilt the spinach for a few minutes. Drain and allow to cool.

When the Spinach has cooled enough to handle, squeeze as much liquid as possible out with your hands before chopping.

– 2 tbsp oil
– 1 onion, diced
– 1 garlic clove, chopped
– 1 tsp thyme, parsley, or both

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 10 minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic and cook for a further 3-4 minutes before adding the fresh herbs and chopped spinach. Remove the pan from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

– Ready-made puff pastry

Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface into a rectangle shape, about 4mm thick, before lifting onto the baking tray. Spread the spinach mix over the pastry (leave a small margin along the edges). Scatter over the cheese and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden. Delicious!

Variations

Spinach and Pesto Tart

Try spreading a layer of Pesto over the puff pastry before piling on your spinach mixture, top with parmesan cheese and halved cherry tomatoes before cooking for a Mediterranean take! If you’ve been growing Basil in your Seed Pantry Grow Pod, you might even make the pesto yourself with our simple recipe!

Spinach and Ricotta Rolls

For a creamy dinner time favourite, add 75g each of ricotta and feta cheese to your spinach and onion mixture. Spread over the pastry, leaving a 2cm margin along one of the long edges and roll into a long sausage shape. Cut the roll into 4 equal pieces and pop into the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden.

Enjoy!

The Seed Pantry team 🌼

BUY your own Seed Pantry Grow Pod 2 here…

#SeedPantryGrowClub

WIN a lucky-dip addition to your next box by sharing your plant pictures with us on Instagram. Use the hashtag #SeedPantryGrowClub or tag us @seedpantry to enter.

Subscribe to the Grow Club box for flowers, food and herb seeds ready to sow each month… Curious? Come check out all of this month’s options!

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Grow Pod Basil Pesto Recipe

So you’ve successfully grown basil in your Grow Pod 2… what better way to use it than making your own pesto? No fancy expensive ingredients needed; Here is our variation on the classic pesto recipe.

Home » Food Growing

Don’t feel confined to pesto pasta! This versatile basil pesto recipe is great for sandwiches, added to salads, alongside plain-cooked fish, smeared over roasted vegetables, dolloped and stirred into soup or as a simple dip with crudités. You can use other herbs in pesto too, mint works brilliantly, as do stronger herbs such as sage or thyme, although these are best combined with parsley so they don’t overpower the more subtle flavours in the sauce. If you fancy giving other herbs a go, check out our Top 10 best herbs to start growing.

Ingredients:

– 50g breadcrumbs
– 50g basil, leaves only (or 25g each Basil and Parsley)
– 35g strong cheddar, grated
– ½ garlic clove, peeled and chopped
– 100-150ml rapeseed or olive oil
– A good pinch of sea salt and black pepper

How to do it

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Scatter the breadcrumbs on a baking tray and bake for about 10 minutes until dry and golden, checking them frequently towards the end as they burn quite quickly. Tip on to a plate and allow to cool.
  2. Place the toasted breadcrumbs into a food processor, along with the basil, parsley, garlic and cheese and blitz to a paste.
  3. With the machine running on low speed, slowly pour in the oil until you have a thick purée.
  4. Scrape your pesto into a bowl, and season to taste with a little salt and pepper.

Variations

Try replacing the breadcrumbs with toasted pine nuts or walnuts. Walnuts can be lightly toasted in an oven preheated to 180°C/Gas mark 4 for 5-8 minutes. For the pine nuts, place them in a dry frying pan and toast over a medium heat for a few minutes, tossing frequently. One they’ve turned golden brown, remove them from the pan to stop them from burning and leave to cool.

The Seed Pantry team 🌼

BUY your own Seed Pantry Grow Pod 2 here…

#SeedPantryGrowClub

WIN a lucky-dip addition to your next box by sharing your plant pictures with us on Instagram. Use the hashtag #SeedPantryGrowClub or tag us @seedpantry to enter.

Subscribe to the Grow Club box for flowers, food and herb seeds ready to sow each month… Curious? Come check out all of this month’s options!

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Cono Sur teams up with Seed Pantry..

Cono Sur teams up with the Seed Pantry at the Edible Garden Show

In line with its green credentials, award-winning Chilean winery Cono Sur is linking up with urban gardening company Seed Pantry to exhibit at this year’s Edible Garden Show at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire from 18th – 20th March.

Continuing their joint efforts to encourage people to grow, cook and eat their own produce, Cono Sur and Seed Pantry are inviting visitors to their ‘Urban Garden’ stand at the Edible Garden Show, where they will demonstrate innovative ways to grow fruit and vegetables in the smallest of spaces, from window boxes to balconies, using household items such as newspapers and even bikes!

Visitors to the stand will have the opportunity to taste the delicious, sustainably-produced wines within the award-winning Cono Sur range including the highly-acclaimed Pinot Noir, as well as learn how to plant vegetable seeds, make a plant pot out of old newspaper and find out about how to match their home-grown produce to Cono Sur wines.

Cono Sur is renowned for its sustainable production, becoming the first winery in South America to gain the ISO 14 064 certification, widely regarded as the most reliable measure of efficiency in measuring greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainability is at the heart of Cono Sur’s philosophy and the team goes to great lengths to produce perfect wines with the minimum environmental impact.

Cono Sur and the Seed Pantry’s Urban garden stand will be at the Edible Garden Show from the 18th – 20th March so come along and learn how to eat, cook and drink sustainably! For further information on sustainable living and seasonal recipe ideas, visit the website www.conosurgreencooks.com