Small Tweaks Big Difference

normal growing conditions - 5 days

We are always searching for better ways to do things and we based some production changes on things we had noticed. We noticed a distinct advantage to presoaking larger seeds while we were working with our pea shoots. So we experimented with some radish seeds to see what might happen. We planted three trays of minowase radish seeds. This first photo on the left here is our normal process of placing the seeds on our custom blended MicroFarm Soil with a simple misting to moisten and germinate the seeds.

We then took a second tray and used our hydroponic system which involved more water but not a soaking. The third tray in our little experiment was seeds that were soaked for 5 hours and then placed on the same MicroFarm Soil for germination. The comparison photos are shown below with all three growing trays. You can really see the difference the 5 hour soak gave our minowase radish plants. We are normally at the harvest point at 7 days or so, so these all are good to go, but the plants emerging from the soaked seeds are significantly stronger and larger. When you look at the gallery below, the third picture shows all three trays and vividly illustrates that a small tweak can give you large results ...

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