Spring Greening Grasses, microgreens give touch of spring to any home

Kermit the Frog had it all wrong.

It IS easy being green. Even in the throes of mud season. You could just let April (snow) showers bring May flowers, but who wants to wait?

Not Melita Westerlund. This time of year, the grass outside her Bar Harbor home still has the rumpled brown pall of winter, but inside, spring is in full swing.

“You don’t have anything green in nature, so you kind of force nature inside the house,” Westerlund said recently.

A native of Finland, Westerlund maintains many of her country’s traditions at her home in Maine. One of the most striking – and simple – customs is planting Finnish Easter grass in a shallow dish or tray. As the holiday approaches, she also decorates slender birch branches with colorful feathers and places them throughout the home.

“That’s what they sell in the marketplaces in Helsinki,” Westerlund said.

For Kim Pitula, planting grass indoors is more a matter of aesthetics than tradition. Pitula and her mother, Molly Woodsum, own Molly’s, a small boutique in Winterport. On her first buying trip to New York, Pitula encountered small, chic, metal trays full of perfectly manicured plots of grass at a trade show. It was the dirty-snow, slushy boots, tail end of winter in Manhattan, yet each of the vendors had managed to bring a bit of spring into the convention center.

“It was so beautiful,” Pitula said.

So she decided to try it at her own shop. Each February, she buys wheat berries from a natural foods store, fills a few weathered urns with soil, sprinkles the seeds on top, waters the whole shebang, and – voila! green grass in no time.

“It’s just like a breath of fresh air for the customers,” she said. “Just when they’re asking, ‘When’s it going to warm up?’ you have the grass growing, and they run their hands over it.”

At Cleonice Mediterranean Bistro in Ellsworth, customers don’t run their hands over the trays of pea shoots or tiny basil and red amaranth leaves at the end of the bar. They’re more likely to run their fork over the greens – well, once chef Rich Hanson snips off a few sprigs and places them on a plate, that is.

“Each one, of course, has a unique flavor,” he said. “We use them as garnishes, but they work very well as conversation pieces, too. They bring some life into the restaurant at this time of year.”

In addition to being beautiful, the microgreen trays from Four Season Farm in Harborside have a practical purpose as well – they can be used in cooking or in salads. The flavor of baby basil isn’t strong enough for a pesto, but the leaves can be tossed with cooked pasta.

“It does have flavor. It’s just not as developed as when it gets more mature,” Hanson said.

Though Barbara Damrosch, who owns Four Season Farm with her husband, Eliot Coleman, sells the greens commercially to restaurants and shops in the area, she says it’s easy to grow microgreens at home, too. Damrosch writes a weekly column for the Washington Post, and she recently told readers how to start their own indoor garden.

For beginners, she recommends starting with six easy varieties: red amaranth, which has small, crimson leaves with a sweet, slight licorice flavor; arugula; watercress; chervil, basil, and snow pea shoots, which Hanson recommends tossing with garlic and ginger in a stir-fry. Or, you can snip them to create a salad rich in flavor and nutrients.

“Sort of like a late winter multivitamin pill,” Damrosch writes, “except that it tastes like spring and looks like a garden.”

Grass

What you’ll need: Wheat berries (also sold as wheat grass or cat grass) or rye grass seeds; an urn, tray, shallow rimmed dish, or flower pot; soilless potting mix such as ProMix.

What to do: There are two ways to plant grass indoors. Melita Westerlund soaks a paper towel in water, places it in a shallow dish with a rim, and heavily sprinkles grass seed on top. Then, she places the dish in a dark area until the roots show, making sure to water regularly and carefully, so the seeds don’t float away. When the grass has grown to a height of 1 inch (this can take up to two weeks), she places the tray in a sunny spot and continues to water and trim as necessary.

When Kim Pitula plants wheat grass inside, she fills an urn with potting mix (but a tray, metal pail or other decorative planter will work), thickly sprinkles wheat berries on top, waters them and in a week, sprouts come up. She doesn’t trim the grass, but you can – or, you could let your cat have a nibble, because they love wheat grass. Water regularly, and discard once the grass starts to turn yellow and scraggly.

Greens

What you’ll need: Basil, red amaranth, arugula, watercress, lacy chervil, or snow pea (Damrosch recommends the Dwarf Grey Sugar variety) seeds – enough to sow thickly. More advanced “microfarmers” can try Asian greens such as tatsoi, mizuna, or Tokyo Bekana cabbage; Bianca Riccia frisee endive; bull’s blood beet; Bright Lights chard; and herbs such as fennel, dill, cumin, chives and cilantro. “Almost any edible green is worth a shot,” Damrosch says. Four Season Farm sells its greens in attractive wood flats, but for growing, Damrosch recommends an undivided plastic tray with drainage holes and a second, solid tray on the bottom for watering. A soilless, peat-based seed-starting mix (preferably an organic one with compost) works best.

What to do: Sow the seeds thickly, water from the bottom, and place them in a sunny spot or under a broad-spectrum fluorescent light. The greens will mature in two to four weeks, depending on conditions, and they can get up to 4 inches tall before they outgrow their space. Snip them as they grow – there is no right size – and enjoy.

Instructions used with permission of Barbara Damrosch. To read her column, which runs every Thursday, visit www.washingtonpost.com.