Lap Farm — Small-space indoor farming: growing | lapfarm.com

How little space is enough?

A single 60 x 30 cm shelf section is a complete farm: it holds 2-4 standard trays under one LED bar.

The building block is the 1020 tray, a shallow pan 25 x 50 cm (10 x 20 in) that holds only 2-5 cm of growing medium. The shallow fill is deliberate: microgreens are cut young, so roots never need depth.

Two to four of those trays fit on one 60 x 30 cm shelf section, lit by a 20-40 W LED bar running 14-16 hours a day on a timer. A spare shelf, a wire rack tier or the top of a dresser all qualify.

From that footprint you rotate crops: one tray sowing, one tray growing, one jar of sprouts rinsing. The shelf never sleeps, but it never spreads either.

Seed to first cut: the ordered procedure

From sowing to harvest takes 7-21 days, and each stage has its own typical failure.

The sequence never changes, only the calendar: radish compresses it to 6-10 days, pea shoots stretch it to 10-14, and most other microgreens land somewhere inside the 7-21 day window.

Cut with clean scissors just above the medium, weigh the harvest once so you learn what your tray gives, then compost the spent root mat and sow again.

• Day 0 — Fill the tray with 2-5 cm of medium, level it, and sow seed densely across the surface.
• Days 1-3 — Keep the medium evenly damp; the typical failure here is patchy germination from dry corners.
• Days 3-5 — Move the tray under the LED bar for 14-16 h daily; the typical failure is leggy, pale stems from too little light.
• Days 6-10 — Radish is ready first; the typical failure now is damping-off, stems collapsing at the soil line when the medium stays soaked.
• Days 10-14 — Pea shoots reach cutting size; slower trays catch up.
• Days 7-21 — Cut everything at 5-10 cm tall, once the first true leaves appear; expect roughly 200-500 g per tray.

Watering: damp, not soaked

An established tray drinks about 200-500 ml of water a day, applied from the top.

Top-water gently so the medium stays damp but never soaked. A tray that drips when tilted is a tray growing mold; a tray with dry corners germinates in patches.

The 200-500 ml range shifts with room temperature and crop density, so read the medium, not the clock: the surface should feel like a wrung-out sponge.