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I had the issue of harvested microgreens wilting in the refrigerator (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/gardening@lemmy.world
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These images are both from about 24 hours in the refrigerator. The paper clamshells I got allow for a high level of evaporation, sucking the moisture from the greens. So I had the idea to put it inside one of the trays I use to grow them while inside the refrigerator, and it worked. The solution being that the humidity gets trapped rather than sucked out during the refrigeration process. By keeping them in the humidity dome, the greens are crisp and taste as fresh as if they were harvested minutes ago. I misted them lightly before putting in last night, diluted hydrogen peroxide solution.

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[–] [S] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

Thanks for sharing, did you use hydrogen peroxide at any step to sanitize? I did a light diluted misting before harvest. The problem is the paper clam shells absorb a ton of respiration and dehydrate the greens rapidly in less than 24 hours. Plastic clam shells would solve that problem, but then create plastic waste when the customer throws it out. So my idea is if it keep them in the dome tray until delivery it will keep them fresh much longer until arrival, at which point the customer receives just the paper clam shell, with the knowledge that if put in the refrigerator it'll become wilted fast.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    We never used hydrogen peroxide on radish or peas (ours were regular peas tho, not speckled), it was resistant enough on its own and we grew so much of it that a peroxide spray would cost way too much in both materials and man hours. We reserved it for the more delicate crops, like kale and red chard, where we would mist them with a diluted solution on seeding, when they were done sprouting, and any time they started to look wilty, but interestingly never before the harvest. I'm not sure if we just never thought about it or if it was detrimental, but it never seemed to be necessary.

    For the really extremely sensitive plants, like basil, we sprayed them with a chitosan solution, a biopesticide which helps plants grow stronger and fight off fungal infections. Be careful if you want to try this though, get the "vegan"/artificially produced chitosan, because most of it is made from the shells of shrimp/crustaceans, which is a common allergy in some people. It is, of course, extremely expensive, even when used in diluted solutions like ours (5g/1L), so you should really keep it for other crops.

    Side tangent aside, it certainly can help if you do the peroxide spray, but I'm worried that you're adding even more extra moisture, and without the drying step in front of a fan it could make them wilt faster (dry them!!! I know I'm hammering this point but if you're gonna take anything from this is to try drying them before cutting/harvesting)

    I'm not sure how the paper clamshells work and interact in this, I don't have any experience with them as we unfortunately used single use plastic boxes for everything, but I'm sure you can figure something out.
    One tip I might have is, like we did, to cut and put them into large plastic airtight tupperware boxes with the paper towels every 3cm and blah blah... (what I said in my first message, I should really practice writing shorter texts and getting to the point :D ), and then putting them into the paper clamshells just before the delivery. The tupperware box, which stays with you, is then of course washable and reusable.

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