The 130 year-old house Michelle and I bought does not have a proper kitchen. Previously transformed into an office and subsequently neglected by the former owner, the house has a small kitchenette with about a foot of counter space in what we are now using as a new laundry room (the house didn’t have one of those either!).
Such a small space makes food prep and indoor growing challenging. We have picked rooms on the main level to be our new kitchen and pantry but it takes time to get everything installed. From cupboards to countertops to appliances, we are starting from scratch. And our main goal is to create a kitchen that supports growing, harvesting and preparing our own food.
We haven’t picked out all of our appliances but we know one thing: our Urban Cultivator will be designed into our new kitchen space so we have state-of-the-art microgreen growing right in our home. If you aren’t familiar with the Urban Cultivator, it is an automated, dishwasher-sized device that fits seamlessly under a standard kitchen counter. It looks great and makes growing microgreens (sprouts and herbs too!) easy.
It works with both soil or non-soil growing media and a wide variety of seeds so you’ll have a great variety. With four growing trays divided between to levels, you can grow a number of different plants at once. Our first attempt included broccoli, kale, arugula and basil microgreens and they were all successful. The freshness and flavor is unbeatable because you are trimming them as you need them.
The other great thing about the Urban Cultivator is that you can further automate it by plumbing it directly into your water line under your sink so that it monitors and refills the water reservoir. Because our kitchen is not yet installed, we are using it in manual mode which means we drain and refill the reservoir with fresh water ourselves once a week. It takes about five minutes and the actual drainage is still automated so no hardship here!
We are loving our Urban Cultivator and now have radish and Thai basil microgreens growing together in one of the trays. The radishes will mature much faster but we’ll always have a diversity of delicious, ultra-nutritious microgreens from which to choose. Stay tuned for more microgreen information, including why you need to get more of these superfoods into your diet, as well as a step-by-step blog on using the Urban Cultivator.
Curtis