Today we’d like to introduce you to Mindi Lovell.
Hi Mindi, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We started growing microgreens for our family in 2019, just before the pandemic hit.
Getting started was pretty easy. We were utterly self-taught from youtube and gathered supplies from Amazon. We started simple, with some basic salad mix seeds in meal prep containers with some leftover potting soil. At first, they grew on our kitchen counter; then, as we kept growing more, we moved them to a dedicated shelf with a couple of LED lights.
Our family loved watching them grow, microgreens grow quickly, and most are ready to eat in less than 2 weeks. We used them in salads, sandwiches, and stirfry; they were easy to add to any meal. Growing our own microgreens inside during the pandemic was a relief to have consistent produce, especially during winter when we didn’t have our outdoor garden to rely on.
We started selling microgreens at our local farmer’s market as a hobby, something fun to share with our neighbors. After a couple of months, we knew if we wanted to keep putting the time and money into microgreens, we needed to be actually making money. Most of the time at the farmer’s market was spent educating people about what microgreens are. Every few weeks, we would have someone who said they’d been looking for microgreens everywhere, and they were so excited to find us.
Growing microgreens was the easy part. The hard part was finding customers in our area. Microgreen growers all around the world are facing the same problem. How do we find and connect with people interested in microgreens? To ease growers’ pains, we came up with the Microgreen Directory idea, a directory of microgreen farms worldwide.
A place where anyone who had heard of microgreens could come, type in their zip code, and their nearest microgreen farms would appear. Microgreen lovers would no longer have to ask where can I buy microgreens? They would have a handful of farms at their fingertips that they could connect with the farmer, visit their website, ask them all their microgreen questions, and compare farms to find their best fit.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The original Microgreen Directory launched in the summer of 2021. It started as a Google site’s website to gauge interest in farmers wanting to be on the Directory and customers looking for microgreens.
The site gained about 60 farms and seemed to be helpful. A new and improved Microgreen Directory was launched in February 2022 and already has over 170 farms listed, with more joining every day. An obstacle is finding these farms and letting them know about our service.
We want all microgreen farms on our map to help them gain customers and show the world how many microgreen farms there are and are here to stay.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Microgreen Directory?
Microgreen Directory is a free resource for all microgreen farms, big or small, to list their farm on our map. Microgreens are relatively new products, mostly grown indoors in greenhouses or warehouses. Microgreens are not planted by the acre but produced by the tray.
We specialize in connecting local microgreen lovers with local microgreen farmers. Microgreens can be mass-produced, but they don’t travel well because of their delicate size and short shelf life. They are best eaten fresh within 3-5 days after harvest.
Finding a local microgreen farm is the best way to find high-quality microgreens. If you’ve been to a farmers market, you’ve probably seen a microgreen farmer but not realized how many farmers are in your area. It’s such a small niche that not many people have heard of, but it’s rapidly gaining popularity across the globe.
Our Directory is up and live! You can use it today to find microgreens near you. Using the site is easy; type in your zip code, and your nearest microgreen farms will appear. We’ve just relaunched and are populating our Directory every day with more farms.
If you don’t see any farms in your area, there is a section to fill out your zip code, and we will help connect you to a farmer. Out of our 150 farms, 3 are in San Diego; there are several more; it’ll just take more time to list them all on the Directory.
Create a free account today for any microgreen farms interested in listing their farm. Let everyone know you’re open to serving more customers.
What matters most to you?
We want to help the local microgreen farm stay in business.
This has been a hard couple of years for so many, and many microgreen farms have sprung up from lost jobs looking for new career opportunities. Finding paying customers is one of the most complex parts of owning a successful farm. We want to help connect people looking for microgreens to those farms.
Everyone keeps saying “support local” supporting your local microgreen farm is a way to put those words into action
Contact Info:
- Email: Microgreen.Directory@gmail.com
- Website: www.Microgreen.Directory
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/microgreen.directory
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MicrogreenDirectory
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MicrogreenD
