microgreens are teeny tiny baby vegetables harvested within 7-14 days of sprouting. all the building blocks of life are activated inside the seed in this first stage of life, and all that vital nutrition is densely packed in every super-flavorful serving of greens.

  • sunnies

    sunflower microgreens were what opened my eyes to sprouts. sunnies, as they’re lovingly called by many, are beautifully crunchy and textural with all the nuttiness of a sunflower seed. those seed leaves, or cotyledons, are the developed halves of your common sunflower seed opening up and coming to life! they make a great crunchy addition to any salad, especially with a creamy dressing, but are also an addictive healthy munchy straight raw out of the box. what really gets me going is that sunnies are a complete plant based protein, with the activation of the living seeds developing the full roster of essential amino acids. there’s up to 25% protein by weight lurking in those luscious leaves - meaning a 100g serving of sunnies has a comparable load of dietary protein as the same weight in red meat, while happily breathing out a carbon negative footprint. i think that’s kind of a big deal.

  • snap pea

    super sweet and flavorful, these pea microgreens taste just like a sugar snap pea, with a crisp springy texture that enhances anything from a sandwich to a stir fry. these most hearty of microgreens hold up best to heat in cooking, and go great with noodles. like all microgreens they are packed with a concentrated dose of vitamins and essenial minerals - peas in particular are full of vitamins A & C, and are a great dietary source of iron for us vegetarians in the audience. while not quite as impressive as the sunnies, they’re a good source of plant-based protein as well. sprouting pea microgreens year round, rain or shine, is a great way to keep the bright green flavors of springtime on your plate even in the dead of a dreary seattle winter. and those teeny curly tendrils are just so cute!

  • broccoli

    it really irritates me when people go around saying superfood this, superfood that… but I begrudgingly accept that if anything is a superfood, it’s broccoli sprouts. we already think of broccoli as a healthy vegetable, but every single sprout contains the nutritional building blocks for the entire adult vegetable, with up to 40 (four zero!) times the vitamin C per serving compared to adult florets; and a 100 fold concentration of glucoraphanin, which your body converts to sulforaphane, the star of the nutritional show. a powerful antioxidant and anti-aging agent, this compound is found in all cruciferous veggies like cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and the like - but baby broccoli has by far the most potent sulforaphane punch of the pack. watch dr rhonda patrick nerd out about the health benefits of sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts here - take it from the experts!

get your greens

frequently asked questions

how should I eat these?

anywhere where you’d use another leafy green, try a bunch of micros instead! it drives me crazy when people use micros as garnish and only sprinkle four or five leaves onto a dish. eat a handful! they can be enjoyed raw straight out of the box; added to salads, sandwiches, or soups; or even a super nutrient-dense green smoothie! in particular, sunnies make an awesome crunchy raw snack. you can cook with microgreens, but as a rule of thumb, add them near the end of cooking and only give them a brief minute or two of heat to prevent wilting.

should I wash my greens?

you can if you want, but be gentle! as a part of the harvesting process to remove those hard black husks, all sunflower shoots from little guy greens are washed and spun dry. the other varieties, unless otherwise noted, are harvested and packaged raw and unwashed, directly from the grow tray into your container. microgreens can be eaten straight out of the box, but it could never hurt to give them a light spritz with cold water and a ride through the salad spinner, especially for young children, women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, or anyone with an autoimmune disorder.

are microgreens really safe to eat?

just like any vegetable, microgreens are as safe to eat as the practices maintained throughout their growth and production. little guy greens has a space-age clean growing process, a small enough production flow that every seed and sprout is inspected by hand, and an obsessively clean farmer: me! if you’ve read stories of e. coli or salmonella outbreaks, they were likely massive operations producing sprouts in the dark - an entirely different beast compared to a small-scale microgreens farm.

what’s the difference between microgreens and sprouts?

it’s a squares and rectangles kind of a thing, but as far as the fda is concerned, the distinction comes in the harvesting method. sprouts generally include the entire body of the plant- that is, the baby root along with the stem and seed leaves. a common example is crunchy bean sprouts in many asian cuisines. microgreens, by contrast, are harvested at the stem - so none of the root matter that was soaking up irrigation water, the bacterial risk factor, ever makes it into the final product. this harvesting practice is huge, and makes the difference between sprouts being classified as a potentially hazardous food, and microgreens being classified as safe and in the same category as other baby greens like your basic spring mix.

how is this container compostable?

science! ingeo biopolymer is a material made from corn husks that works great for cold storage. the plastic will warp and start getting malleable in any amount of heat, and in an industrial composting setting like seattle’s lovely cedar grove compost, the plastic will entirely biodegrade in 60 to 90 days. heat is a necessary component, so they aren’t great for your backyard compost, though - go ahead and throw them in the city compost bin.

couldn’t i just grow these myself?

yes and you totally should! anyone can start sprouting their own seeds with nothing more than a mason jar and a windowsill. i would be thrilled to see more people doing it & i’m happy to give you a seed starter pack so feel free to ask me how to get started at the market! be warned, what starts as growing a tray here and there for your lunch salads may quickly snowball out of control and take over your life until you find yourself running a full production urban farm.