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The drawer of half-used seed packets is a fixture in most gardeners' homes. A packet of beet seed holds around 100 seeds, and one garden bed has room for maybe two dozen full-grown plants. All the leftovers go back in the envelope and into the drawer, and there they sit until next season, or much longer. These seeds stay good for a few years, though their germination rate drops a little every season, and plenty of them get thrown out before they ever reach soil. One way to use an entire seed packet in a single season is to plant the whole thing at once and harvest it three separate times. This triple harvesting method is a great way to reduce seed waste and save money!
The Three Harvest Stages
Rather than waiting months for a single yield, you can treat your plantings as three different crops as they mature.
Microgreens
These young seedlings are ready to cut as soon as their seed leaves open and the first true leaf begins to show. This is usually within 7-20 days. Microgreens are cut right above the soil line, so the roots stay behind. The flavor of microgreens is concentrated and usually sharper than the full-grown plant.
Baby greens
These are harvested by thinning between 25 and 40 days, when the leaves are three to five inches long and still tender enough to eat raw.
Mature vegetables
Most of these crops reach full size somewhere between 50 and 70 days.
Seed Safety Precautions
Before eating young seedlings, always check your seed packet labels. Commercial seeds are sometimes coated in fungicides to prevent soil rot and dyed in bright pink, blue, or green. Chemical coatings can take months to break down on mature crops, but microgreens are harvested just two weeks after planting. Fortunately, most seeds sold to home gardeners are untreated anyway, but it is best to confirm you are buying organic or untreated seeds and to double-check them for bright synthetic dyes before sowing.
What to Do: Buy seed marked untreated, uncoated, or organic if any of it will be eaten young, and look at the seed itself for bright dye before sowing.
Planting For Three Harvests
The spacing guidelines printed on the back of a seed packet only apply if your sole goal is full-size crops. Planting at that spacing from the start means only a few seeds go in the ground. And this is how we end up with lots of partially used seed packets. Sowing the seeds thicker uses up the packet in one season and grows more food.
The easiest way to have all three harvests is to plant in two places. Set up a small tray on a windowsill to sow the microgreens; this will use up a good chunk of the packet. Plant the garden row and follow the thinning guidelines. What is left growing in that row after the second thinning will grow to full size.
- Microgreens: When sowing microgreens, scatter the seeds thickly so they nearly touch. Don't thin them. Then, when they are a few inches tall, harvest everything at once. For small seeds like kale, chard, or beet, a standard packet has only a gram or two of seeds, which is roughly enough to fill a four-inch pot or a takeout container.
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Baby greens: For baby greens, sow the seed a half inch to an inch apart in the garden. This is much closer together than a full-grown plant needs. Around day 20, the seedlings will be two or three inches tall and beginning to crowd each other. Pull out every other seedling so the remaining ones are an inch or two apart. The plants you pull will be small, but you can rinse them and eat them whole, roots included.
By day 35, when the leaves reach three to five inches, thin every other plant once more for raw baby greens. What remains in the ground will now have the elbow room it needs to reach full maturity.
Best Options For Triple Harvesting
Some vegetables adapt well to this staggered triple harvesting strategy, though each one is slightly different at every stage.
Beets
Beet microgreens are ready to cut 10 to 14 days after sowing, once the seed leaves have opened. At this age, the flavor is mild, earthy, and slightly sweet.
The baby leaf harvest starts around 35 days, when the leaves are three to five inches long and still tender enough for a raw salad. The roots are ready at 55 to 60 days.
Keep in mind that a single beet seed is actually a dried fruit holding two to four seeds inside it. The seedlings come up in clumps no matter how carefully the seed was spread, so thinning is mandatory with beets, whether or not the thinnings get eaten.
Kale
Kale microgreens are ready in 8 to 12 days, and their flavor is nutty and cabbage-like. The baby leaves are ready around 25 to 30 days, and full-size plants take 55 to 60 days. Mature kale plants will keep producing leaves until a hard frost, and their flavor gets noticeably sweeter after the first frost.
Swiss chard
Chard microgreens are ready in 10 to 14 days, and their taste is mild and slightly sweet. The baby leaves are ready for harvest around 28 days and taste like a milder spinach.
Full-size chard plants take about 55 days. At that point, the leaves get thicker, and the flavor becomes stronger. Harvest by cutting the outer leaves and leaving the center alone, because the plant will continue producing new growth all season.
Other Seeds Good For Triple Harvests
- Radish: microgreens are ready in 6 to 10 days and roots in 25 to 30 days, though the baby leaves are hairy and most people skip the middle stage.
- Arugula and mustard: these are peppery at every size, fast to germinate, and quick to bolt once the weather warms up.
- Pea shoots: plant densely for shoots or grow out for pods. There is no edible baby leaf stage in between.
Seeds That Aren't Good For Triple Harvesting
Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant all belong to the nightshade family, and the whole plant except the ripe fruit contains alkaloids that can make people sick. Those compounds are in the seedling from the day it sprouts, so a tomato microgreen has the same problem as a tomato leaf. Grow these for the fruit only.
The bean family needs care too, since raw seedlings of some beans have enough lectin to cause real stomach trouble. Garden peas are the safe exception, and these are grown for their shoots.
Both carrots and parsley take two to three weeks just to germinate, and they tend to come up patchy. This means a planted microgreen tray usually ends up half empty after all that waiting. Neither one has enough leaves at the seedling stage to make a harvest worth the wait.
Triple Harvest Planting Timeline
A rough timeline for a packet of beet seeds, sown in early spring:
- Day 0: a small tray is planted at microgreen density, and a garden row is planted with seeds half an inch apart.
- Days 10 to 14: harvest the microgreen tray (cut at the soil line).
- Day 20: the garden row gets its first thinning, and the pulled-up seedlings can be used in salad.
- Day 35: the garden row gets its second thinning, reaching final spacing and producing a real bowl of baby greens.
- Days 55 to 60: pull up the beetroots when fully mature. The tops are also edible and can be cooked like chard.
- After that: resow the tray with whatever seed is left, and the cycle starts over for a fall harvest.