GardenBox is a subscription that sends pre-seeded micro greens kits, growing instructions, and recipes for the greens you receive.
Each shipment contains two gardens with seasonally selected micro greens and herbs that are ready to harvest in about two weeks (or less).
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The Subscription Box: GardenBox
The Cost: $35 per month
The Products: Two 5” x 20” gardens pre-planted with seasonal micro greens or micro herbs. (Note that each garden will yield 3-4 servings.)
Ships to: The continental US.
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My box contained a letter from the GardenBox team. The letter provided recycling instructions for the growing trays, along with a free box offer if you save and return 12 trays.
Each pre-planted tray came with a leaflet that provided information about the plants and growing instructions. This box included Chinese cabbage and beet micro greens. Both can be harvested on day 10.
The reverse of each leaflet included a recipe!
I unpacked each growing tray and removed the protective layer of tissue paper.
The micro greens seeds arrive pre-planted in dehydrated soil.
As per the instructions, I watered each tray until the soil was lightly moist at the surface.
I placed the growing trays inside on my window ledge (the sunniest place in my house).
On day 3, I saw the first signs of sprouting from the Chinese cabbage greens.
On day 4, the beets started to sprout, too.
By day 6, the cabbage micro greens were growing like wild!
The beets were also coming along. Check out those bright red stems!
Here they are on day 8.
Here’s the cabbage on day 10, yay for harvest day!
The beets were ready, too.
I had a friend over for lunch on harvest day, and we decided to make two different salads (one for each green). I harvested half of each tray for the meal.
The yield from the cabbage garden was substantially higher than the yield from the beet garden.
GardenBox provides recipes for each type of micro green they send, but neither of this shipment’s recipes really jumped out at me. I find micro greens super inspiring for some reason, though, so it wasn’t difficult to come up with a couple ideas of my own!
For the beet micro greens, my friend and I made a salad of naval orange slices, greens, quick-pickled red onion, toasted pine nuts, and an agave vinaigrette. I was really happy with how this salad came out! Also, I LOVED the beet micro greens! They added a subtle beet flavor to the salad that was really earthy and delicious, and they were great with the sweet oranges.
We also made a salad with the cabbage micro greens. For that one, we combined greens, thinly sliced red apples, toasted walnuts, and cranberries with a tangy whole grain mustard vinaigrette. Both salads were really good, but I preferred the one with the beet greens. My friend, on the other hand, liked the cabbage green salad! Still, we did our best to share.
Verdict: I really love growing my own micro greens on the window sill, and it’s really handy that GardenBox sends trays that are pre-planted and ready to go. It’s fun to watch their day-to-day progress, and the harvested greens are beautiful, fresh, and healthy. I love coming up with new ways to eat them! The gardens I received in this box yielded enough micro greens for four good-sized salads. In order to think about the value of this subscription, I had to do some research. Micro greens can cost upwards of $5 an oz. (pricey!), and If I had to guess I’d say I got about 4-6 oz. combined from both gardens. Personally, I love the experience of growing, harvesting, and eating my own micro greens, so I think the price is worth paying.
All that said, I’m not sure I feel comfortable recommending GardenBox because of my experience last month. Neither of those gardens grew, and I’m not sure why. I reached out to GardenBox for support, but I never received a reply, which is obviously problematic. I honestly can’t say if last month’s seeds were flawed or if the failed harvest was due to something I did, but I think it’s important to call out GardenBox customer service for the lack of reply. For anyone interested in subscribing, I think it’s important to know that if you run into a problem, you may very well be on your own.
Have you tried growing micro greens before? What do you think about GardenBox?
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