Gardening Quick Tip: Eat Those Thinnings

Thinning your seedlings is a necessary evil. On the one hand, thinning helps produce greater yields in the garden, since overcrowded seedlings compete for sun, nutrients, and moisture. When they lack adequate space to develop roots, they can become stunted and unproductive. They’re also more susceptible to fungal and bacterial diseases if there’s not enough…

Linda Ly
Gardening quick tip: eat those thinnings

Thinning your seedlings is a necessary evil.

On the one hand, thinning helps produce greater yields in the garden, since overcrowded seedlings compete for sun, nutrients, and moisture. When they lack adequate space to develop roots, they can become stunted and unproductive. They’re also more susceptible to fungal and bacterial diseases if there’s not enough air circulation between plants.

On the other hand, thinning can be tedious work if (like me) you tend to sprinkle your seeds pretty liberally in the soil and are faced with hundreds of seedlings to thin every season.

The one saving grace that makes this task bearable is treating those thinnings as an early harvest of your crop — and that includes greens you normally wouldn’t think to eat, such as carrot tops, cucumber greens, and zucchini sprouts, as well as “fancy” greens you’ve likely seen in a supermarket, such as sunflower sprouts, daikon sprouts, and broccoli sprouts.

Carrot seedlings

All of these seedlings (known in culinary terms as sprouts, shoots, and microgreens) are fully edible and highly nutritious versions of your favorite vegetables. When you thin them, don’t toss them!

Carrot thinnings

The seedlings are delicious in salads and sandwiches, or as toppings for pizzas and omelets. (A microgreen salad, dressed in a simple vinaigrette and scattered over those meals once they come off the heat, is my favorite way to spruce up a one-pan dish.)

Carrot microgreens

Generally, you should start to thin seedlings when they’re 1 to 3 inches in height. Sometimes I’ll wait a little longer with root vegetables, like beets and radishes, as I like the more substantial greens. (If you’re the same, simply harvest the seedlings once they have a few sets of true leaves.)

Beets and turnips in the garden

Depending on how crowded your seedlings are, you could pull them out (taking care not to disturb the surrounding plants) or snip or pinch them off at soil level. In a single thinning session, you could easily have enough greens for a small salad!

Beet plant thinnings

Some of My Favorite Thinnings to Eat:

  • Tender greens (lettuce, spinach, chard, arugula, radicchio, bok choy, tatsoi, and other Asian mustards)
  • Brassicas (kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts)
  • Legumes (edamame, snow peas, fava beans, snap beans)
  • Climbing plants (summer and winter squash, peas, cucumbers)
  • Root vegetables (carrots, beets, radishes, turnips)
  • Herbs (basil, cilantro, parsley, fennel, dill)
  • Flowers (sunflowers, nasturtiums)

7 Comments

    1. read the seed packet and see what distance apart plants should be. then look at your seedlings, if any are too close remove them to enable the proper distance. the seedlings removed are the thinnings

  1. Thanks for sharing. I have not thought about thinning seedlings before to increase my yield. Will try to make your way.

  2. Totally agree.. Thinning is one of the best ways to yield more crops especially with green leafy veggies. Been doing it on my garden too. 🙂

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