Why one rack and five shelves makes the math work.
A staggered five-shelf rotation lets one rack run continuous harvest. Here's how we space the sow dates so something is ready every week.
A continuous-harvest rotation on a single rack is the kind of small detail that turns "I grow microgreens" into "I grow microgreens on a schedule."
Five shelves, staggered a few days apart, means we always have one ready, one nearly ready, one halfway, one just up, and one freshly seeded. The math:
- Sunflower: 8–10 days sow to harvest
- Pea: 10–14 days
- Radish: 6–8 days
- Broccoli: 8–10 days
Stagger the sow dates and you don't have a "harvest day." You have a harvest week, every week.
Pink-and-white light, not just pink
The pink-only LED look is everywhere on YouTube and there's a reason: it's efficient. But pink-only makes the leaves look weird, the room feel like a nightclub, and your photos come out unusable. We mix in white panels for the same reason restaurants don't light their dining rooms in red — the food has to look like food.
It's a small operational call that costs a few extra watts and gives us greens we can actually photograph against a cream tablecloth.