When you’re planting microgreens, the tray you’re planting in is arguably one of the most valuable elements of the growing process.
It’s meant to hold all your soil and seeds while efficiently draining water. Without a tray (effectively, a container), you've literally got no way of growing your greens.
Whether you're starting a farm as a business or just planning to grow your own greens for personal consumption at home, it's fairly important to spend the time upfront to find quality materials. Sometimes, saving a couple of bucks during the startup phase can lead to costly upgrades in the future. For example, if you opt for cheap, flimsy trays that break every few months, you'll eventually end up spending more than just purchasing durable materials to begin with.
Why wouldn't you invest in quality trays?
When it comes to commercial production, 10”x20” trays are typically the industry standard (they’re also our preferred dimensions for propagation trays as well).
Sure, there are all sorts of other configurations, like 10"x10" trays, 5"x5", even 1"x1" trays. They're all usable and viable for growing your own microgreens at home. But like this article mentioned earlier, 10"x20" trays are the standard when it comes to micros.
In this article we’ll be quickly reviewing Bootstrap Farmer’s 10”x20” trays – specially, their Mesh, Extra Strength Shallow trays.
The Mesh Screen
The most notable thing about these trays (other than their durability, which we’ll get to in a little bit) is the insane amount of drainage holes at the bottom!
Initially, when starting with these trays, we figured that it’d be a problem – both with soil retention and drainage.
We figured soil would slowly leak away from the bottom, bit by bit with every watering.
It didn’t take too long to figure out that our assumptions were wrong.
These trays hold in our soil medium perfectly, with very minimal soil draining through when watered. It does an excellent job of retaining moisture in the tray for about a day or so. The holes were pretty big, and visually, they looked like they'd just allow the soil to pour straight though.
The abundant holes delivered. Soon after, we'd buy 100's more of these trays. Not for their drainage/screens alone, but also in part because they lasted longer than almost any of ther brand of tray we've grown with - they were seriously durable.
Durability
The next most notable feature about these trays is their “extra strength.”
If you’ve ever worked with cheap, flimsy trays, you probably know how easy it is to crack, chip, and break trays.
Some can be hard or nearly impossible to handle single-handedly, and others just warp and bend drastically over time.
Having tested out trays of all shapes, sizes, and materials, we can say for certain that it’s not worth saving a few bucks and buying cheap microgreen trays. Tray costs easily add up.
Going back to these 10”x20” mesh trays from Bootstrap Farmer—they’re definitely as durable as advertised. Over the course of three or so years, none of our (~100) mesh trays have broken or cracked.
A few do have chips along the corners/sides, but they’re all still 100% usable.
These trays get a 10/10 from us in terms of durability and longevity!
Drainage
Alright, let’s go back to the most notable feature of this tray again, real quick. The mesh screen.
Obviously, the added holes help drain water faster than other 10”x20” microgreen tray designs, such as these (which are also GREAT trays for certain crops/situations).
Faster drainage isn’t always the best / preferred for every type of microgreen crop, but it really helps with certain crops like Cilantro, Basil, Amaranth, Broccoli, etc.
Some crops just don’t prefer to be sitting in water as long as others.
But it wasn't only the crops that hated damp soil that did well in those trays - literally every crop we tested did atleast 5% better in Bootstrap farmer's mesh trays.
Mesh vs. Conventional Propagation trays
Considering the fact that you’re only shopping for sturdy, durable trays, drainage is going to be the main separator between the two designs.
We found that certain crops perform better with the mesh trays vs. trays with the conventional hole design (short, thin slits).
Though it could vary depending on the batch/variety of seed you end up with (we prefer True Leaf Market for organic seeds), here are the crops that we’ve found to perform better with improved drainage:
- Broccoli
- Basil
- Cilantro
- Onion
Now, get to planting!
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