MICROGREEN BUSINESS · MARGIN BY CHANNEL
Best microgreens to sell in 2026. Eight varieties, ranked by what they earn. Fix it from only $3 a month.
Most "best microgreens" rankings order varieties by how they photograph. This one orders them by margin, and by which sales channel actually rewards them. Eight varieties, the money each returns per tray, and the four to leave alone until your operation is steady.
Why most variety rankings are useless to anyone selling
You have seen the same roster a dozen times. Sunflower, pea, radish, broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, beet, chia, wheatgrass, amaranth. Sometimes ordered by flavor, sometimes by nutrient density, almost never by whether a grower can move the stuff.
That is the gap here. The question is not what is fun to cultivate or what photographs well. The question is which varieties reliably convert square footage into money, and which ones quietly take money out.
I run microGREEN FX in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania. The farm passed PA Preferred organic certification on the first attempt, supplies CSA partner farms across Southeast Pennsylvania, and works weekly farmers market routes. Across hundreds of growers using GLAP the ranking lines up with what we see in our own figures. The varieties that earn are not always the ones the hobby blogs adore.
The eight that earn
Ordered by combined margin, customer recognition and how forgiving they are commercially. The first four are the non-negotiable opening lineup. The final four reward an operation that is already humming.
1. Sunflower shoots
The highest revenue tray at microGREEN FX, and not by a small margin. Sweet, crunchy, striking to look at, and approachable for a shopper who has never eaten a microgreen. It outsells everything else on our farmers market stall by a factor of two to three. Seed cost is moderate and yield is among the best in the category, which is what puts it at the head of the ranking. The husks add labor, and that labor is precisely why the margin survives: it deters the casual competitor.
2. Pea shoots
The chef's variety. Ask any restaurant kitchen which microgreen they buy most and pea shoots win nine times out of ten. Garnish, salad base, pizza topping, ramen finish. Seed cost per ounce is low, yield is high, and the flavor is mild enough to sell to anyone. Restaurant demand alone earns pea shoots a place in your opening three.
3. Microgreen radish
The cash-cycle champion. Radish returns money in far less time than sunflower does, which matters enormously while you are funding next week's seed out of last week's takings. Three cultivars worth knowing commercially: China Rose, Triton and Daikon. Radish is the variety that carries a new grower from no income to a first paying customer in under a two weeks.
4. Broccoli microgreens
The nutrition buyer's variety, sold on sulforaphane and bought by people who are not really shopping for a salad ingredient. Yield per tray is only moderate, but the price point is strong because of the health positioning, so the margin lands in the same band as radish. It also keeps condition longer than most, often 10 to 14 days refrigerated, which is what makes it one of the few varieties grocery wholesale will take.
5. Salad mix, the operating leverage play
Once the four above are running, a salad mix raises revenue without adding a variety to your lineup at all. You are recombining what you already grow. At microGREEN FX the mix at $7 per 2-ounce unit consistently outsells single-variety units at $5. Same inputs, better price point, no additional seed item to manage.
6. Cilantro microgreens
The specialty herb restaurants will pay double for. Revenue per ounce is high, $5.00 retail, but yield per tray is low and the cycle is long, so margin per square foot lands in the moderate band rather than the top one. Chefs use it on tacos, ceviche and plated proteins. It is also the variety that teaches you about crop loss, which is a cost to price in before you commit capacity to it.
7. Basil microgreens
Same lane as cilantro, one notch further along. Highest retail per ounce of the eight at $6.00, lowest yield per tray, and the longest cycle in this group, so it ties up capacity for weeks. Restaurants pay well for it. Make it your seventh or eighth variety, not your second.
8. A rotating specialty
Red amaranth, nasturtium, or a blend named after your farm. This slot is your experimentation budget and your reason for a regular customer to pause at your stall again this week. It is not where the money is. It is what stops your display looking identical to last month, and it is where you test demand before committing a permanent slot to it.
Margin by variety
Per-tray dollar figures from microGREEN FX. They move with your region, your seed cost and your channel mix, but the relative ranking holds across the GLAP data set. All figures assume a standard 10 by 20 tray. Retail reflects Pennsylvania farmers markets in 2026.
| Variety | Yield per tray (oz) | Retail per oz | Tray revenue | Margin tier | Strongest channel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunflower shoots | 11 to 14 | $2.50 | $28 to $35 | Highest | Farmers market |
| Pea shoots | 10 to 13 | $2.25 | $22 to $29 | High | Restaurants |
| Microgreen radish | 6 to 9 | $3.00 | $18 to $27 | High | Restaurants |
| Broccoli | 5 to 8 | $3.00 | $15 to $24 | High | Grocery wholesale |
| Salad mix | 8 to 11 | $3.50 | $28 to $38 | Highest | Farmers market and CSA |
| Cilantro micro | 3 to 5 | $5.00 | $15 to $25 | Moderate | Restaurants only |
| Basil micro | 2 to 4 | $6.00 | $12 to $24 | Moderate | Restaurants only |
| Rotating specialty | varies | $5 to $8 | $10 to $25 | Strategic | Repeat customers |
Read down the margin column and one thing jumps out. The two strongest rows, sunflower and salad mix, are both cheap seed sold at volume. The two weakest, cilantro and basil, are expensive seed sold at a high unit price. High retail per ounce is not the same thing as good margin, and plenty of growers learn that the expensive way.
Which channel rewards which variety
Channel matters as much as variety does. The same sunflower that moves forty units on a Saturday can go untouched on a grocery shelf. So choose the channel first, then build the lineup that channel pays for.
Farmers market
Sunflower and pea shoots lead. Salad mix and broccoli sell steadily. Radish picks up once shoppers know what it is. This customer is browsing, tasting, and deciding in a moment, so lead with what looks abundant and tastes familiar. Save the specialty for the shopper who returns a third time and asks what is new. Revenue here is high per ounce, but it is weather-dependent and it does not compound.
Restaurants
Pea shoots, radish, cilantro and basil are the standing orders. Sunflower is an occasional addition. A restaurant account pays more per ounce than retail, and the price of that premium is exactness: the same quality, the same day, every week, plus the flexibility to add an item on Wednesday for a Friday delivery. Three to five varieties at 4 to 8 ounces per item per week is steadier money than a stall, and it is the income that lets you plan production instead of guessing at it.
CSA shares
A four-pack of sunflower, pea shoots, salad mix and a rotating specialty is the strongest configuration. CSA members want familiarity and small novelty at once, so lock the base three and rotate the fourth slot. The commercial value of CSA is not the price per ounce, it is the cadence: known volume, known weeks, paid up front. That is the nearest thing to predictable revenue in this business.
Grocery wholesale
Sunflower, pea shoots and broccoli, and realistically nothing else. Product waits unattended for three to seven days before somebody buys it, so condition on day five decides whether you get a reorder. Specialty herbs do not survive that. Wholesale pays the lowest price per ounce of any channel and it is still worth having, because it absorbs volume on a schedule, including surplus that would otherwise become a write-off.
The four to leave alone in year one
The flip side of a lineup decision is what you refuse to grow. Beginners lose money on these four because the internet keeps recommending them, and the internet is not paying for the seed.
- Amaranth. Yield is too low against the seed cost. Beautiful in photographs, expensive on a spreadsheet. It belongs somewhere near your fifteenth variety.
- Buckwheat. Uneven germination and a fragile product. A restaurant occasionally requests it. General retail does not ask for it at all.
- Mustard. The flavor divides people. Some samplers love it and the rest walk away, which is a poor bet for a market stall even though it works for a restaurant that ordered it deliberately.
- Wheatgrass. A different customer, different processing, different equipment, sold by the shot rather than by the ounce. Treat it as a separate business if you want it, not as a ninth variety.
None of these are bad plants. They are advanced ones, and advanced punishes an operation that is not yet predictable.
What a ninth variety actually costs
Going from four varieties to ten too quickly is the commonest reason a previously profitable operation begins losing money. The cost is invisible because it never arrives as an invoice. Each addition brings a seed item to buy and store, more handling time, more packaging and signage variants, and a fresh round of explaining to customers what it is. Individually small. Cumulatively, the thing that flattens your margin.
The rule at microGREEN FX is one new variety per quarter, no faster. Run it through a full cycle, hold it in front of customers for four weekends running, then look at the figure. If it equals or beats the dollar per square foot of the variety it would displace, keep it. If it falls below the median, drop it and test a different one. That is a decision, not a preference, and it belongs to the data rather than to how much you personally enjoyed cultivating it.
A worked lineup at fifty trays a week
Say you run 50 trays a week, which is a serious side-hustle scale. A reasonable allocation looks like this.
- 15 trays of sunflower at $30 per tray sold = $450
- 12 trays of pea shoots at $25 per tray sold = $300
- 8 trays of microgreen radish at $22 per tray sold = $176
- 8 trays of broccoli at $22 per tray sold = $176
- 5 trays of salad mix at $32 per tray sold = $160
- 2 trays of cilantro at $20 per tray sold = $40
Weekly gross $1,302, so about $5,200 a month. Inputs and labor take 35 to 50 percent depending on your channel mix and whether you pay anyone, leaving $2,600 to $3,400 monthly net. Multiply the trays out to estimate a larger operation.
Now change one thing. The same 50 trays running only amaranth and buckwheat would gross under $400 a week and lose money once seed and labor come out. Identical square footage, identical hours, a quarter of the revenue. The lineup is not a detail. It is most of the outcome.
I started with sunflower and pea shoots only. Added radish in month two. Added broccoli in month four. By the end of year one I was at six varieties and grossing $4,800 per month from one local farmers market. The variety phase-in is the part nobody talks about.
Microgreen farmer, Lancaster County, PA
Consistency is the product you are actually selling
Here is the part buyers never say out loud. They are not buying microgreens. They are buying the certainty that you will turn up next week with the same thing at the same quality, so they can build a menu, a share box or a shelf plan around you.
Which reframes the whole variety question. A grower who is boringly reliable on four varieties out-earns a grower who is brilliant on ten and misses a delivery, every time, because the reliable one retains the account and the brilliant one is replaced by whoever is steadier. Reliability is the moat. The lineup is merely what you are reliable about.
So the honest test for adding anything is not whether you can grow it. It is whether you can grow it to the same specification, every week, for a year, while still hitting all the rest of what you promised.
Where the app fits
The variety library in GLAP covers 50-plus microgreens with the reference data behind each one, and every tray you enter captures its seed cost, its yield and what it sold for. The analytics then rank your own varieties by dollar per square foot and by channel, using your figures rather than mine.
That is the point. The dollar per square foot for sunflower at your market is not the same number as at ours. By about 90 days most growers discover their gut ranking was wrong on at least one variety, and it is usually a variety they liked.
The $0 plan includes 8 active trays and every microgreen variety in the library, so nothing about your lineup is metered. Solo at $3.00 a month adds basic analytics and CSV export. Grower at $12.99 adds client management, invoicing and forecasting. Pro is $19.99. GLAP is on Google Play for Android and runs in any browser, and the iOS build is in App Store review.
Find your own dollar per square foot →Settled on the lineup and need to produce it? Follow the twelve-step bench procedure from soak to sealed clamshell → That page carries the seed weights per tray, the uncover days, the cut-day checks, and the washing, drying, portioning and cold-chain steps for pack day.
Frequently asked questions
Which microgreens have the best margin?
Sunflower and salad mix, then pea shoots. All three are cheap seed sold at volume, which is what margin actually rewards. Cilantro and basil carry the highest retail per ounce, $5.00 and $6.00, but yield per tray is low and the cycle is long, so margin per square foot lands only in the moderate band. High unit price and good margin are different things, and confusing them is an expensive mistake.
How many varieties should a new seller open with?
Three to five. The pattern at microGREEN FX and across hundreds of GLAP farms is that beginners who launch with ten varieties fail at all ten, while beginners who launch with sunflower, pea shoots and one of broccoli or radish almost always get somewhere, then add one variety per quarter as demand outruns supply. Nothing in the app meters this: every plan includes the whole variety library, the $0 one included.
What sells best at a farmers market?
Sunflower shoots, pea shoots and salad mix, because they sample well, taste familiar and look abundant on a stall. Single-variety units of radish and broccoli sell steadily to repeat customers who already know the flavor. Skip buckwheat and amaranth at a general market. They belong with restaurant clients who asked for them by name.
What do restaurants actually order, and do they pay more?
Pea shoots, radish, cilantro and basil are the standing orders, with sunflower as an occasional addition. They pay more per ounce than retail, and the premium buys exactness: the same quality, the same day, every week, plus the flexibility to add an item midweek. A standing account of three to five varieties at 4 to 8 ounces per item per week is steadier than a stall and lets you plan production instead of guessing.
Is grocery wholesale worth the lower price per ounce?
Often yes, but only for sunflower, pea shoots and broccoli. Wholesale pays the least per ounce of any channel, and product waits unattended for three to seven days before purchase, so condition on day five decides whether you get a reorder. What it buys you is volume on a fixed schedule, which absorbs surplus that would otherwise become a write-off. Specialty herbs do not belong anywhere near it.
Can I make a living selling microgreens?
Yes, with the size of the operation deciding what kind of living. A part-time operation grossing $1,500 to $4,000 a month is realistic for one grower at 30 to 80 trays a week. A full-time one grossing $8,000 to $20,000 a month needs 200 to 500 trays a week, more than one channel, and usually a part-time helper. The lineup matters as much as the volume, since identical trays can gross four times as much or a quarter as much depending on what is in them.
Does organic certification lift what you can charge?
It does. Certification typically supports a 25 to 40 percent premium per ounce at farmers markets and 15 to 25 percent with restaurants. microGREEN FX is PA Preferred certified, passed on the first attempt, and it paid for itself in the first 90 days through the higher price plus access to the restaurant and grocery accounts that will only buy from certified suppliers.
What does adding a ninth variety cost an operation?
More than the seed, and none of it arrives as an invoice. Every addition brings another seed item to buy and store, more handling time, more packaging and signage variants, and more customer explaining. Individually trivial, cumulatively the reason a profitable operation quietly ceases to be one. Add one per quarter, hold it in front of customers for four weekends, then retain it only if it equals the dollar per square foot of whatever it displaced.
The bottom line
Choose four. Sunflower, pea shoots, radish, broccoli. Run them for a quarter until they are boring. Add a salad mix to lift the price point without adding a variety. Add a specialty herb in month four if the operation is steady, and a rotating slot in month six.
Leave amaranth, buckwheat, mustard and wheatgrass for year two. They are not bad varieties, they are advanced ones, and advanced punishes an operation that is not yet predictable.
Then track everything from the first week. The dollar per square foot for sunflower at your market is not my number, and the only ranking worth acting on is the one built out of your own trays.