Microgreens in schools

A single tray of microgreens is a complete cross-curricular unit. It carries biology, maths and data handling, nutrition and sustainability in one project, produces a visible harvest inside ten school days, and costs almost nothing to run on an ordinary classroom windowsill.

See the classroom toolkits

Who this is for

This page is for two people. If you are writing a School Education partnership for Erasmus+ and need a partner with ready content, working infrastructure and real practice, you will find usable material here. If you are a teacher who wants a tray of microgreens growing on the windowsill next month, everything you need to plan the first lesson is already published and free.

One tray maps cleanly across the curriculum: germination and plant biology in science, measurement, graphing and data handling in maths, a harvest the class can actually eat in nutrition, and a low-resource growing method that makes sustainability concrete rather than abstract. The same unit develops competences described in GreenComp, the EU sustainability competence framework — most directly in the areas of ‘Envisioning sustainable futures’ and ‘Acting for sustainability’.

One distinction matters on this page, so we make it early. The portal, the Varieties crop database, the Academy courses and the cookbook are live and in daily use; the classroom toolkits are open drafts your school — or your consortium — can help finish. That is not a compromise: piloting a draft resource with your learners is a legitimate, fundable project activity, and finishing the toolkits is a ready-made work package.

What the method gives your class

Everything here is free and openly published. The first row is live and in daily use today — material you can teach with next week. The second row is where your school can shape what comes next.

The Teach with Microgreens course

A free, self-paced course for educators in the EVEC Microgreens Academy, live and complete. It walks through planning, running and assessing a classroom microgreens unit, so you can test the method yourself before you commit a term to it. Browse the Academy →

The Varieties crop database

Twenty-nine open crop guides covering sowing, timing, care and flavour, variety by variety. In class it works as a reference library: give each student a different crop, and comparing their results becomes the data lesson. Open the database →

The cookbook and open articles

A cookbook of tested recipes closes the loop from tray to plate, and the portal holds more than a hundred free articles that work as reading tasks and research prompts. See the cookbook →

Classroom toolkits (open drafts)

A ten-day unit for lower-secondary learners (13-14), a hydroponics-and-sensors project for ages 15 to 19, and the 10-Day Growing Guide that sets the pace of any unit. All are published as open drafts with feedback forms — pilot them, mark them up, help us finish them.

Workshop experience

Our team and international ESC volunteers run workshops in Athens on growing microgreens in the city, harvesting at home and cooking with the harvest, so the practical guidance in our materials draws on experience with real groups.

A partner for School Education

For a project consortium, the organisation behind the methodology — EVEC Athens (evec.org.gr) — brings working infrastructure in Athens, a large body of open educational content and a portal that keeps results visible long after funding ends, which supports dissemination and the sustainability of results.

The methodology in a classroom

Facilitators running a microgreens session with a school class
Learners' growing diaries and microgreens trays on the workshop table
Harvesting radish microgreens with scissors
Photographs from our own workshops and growing space in Athens.

Results you can use

Everything below is published, free to use in class, and honestly labelled. Live and in daily use today: the Academy courses, the Varieties crop database, the Science Library and the cookbook. Open drafts you can help finish: the three toolkits below, each with a feedback form on its page.

Toolkit for lower-secondary learners (open draft)

The full ten-day classroom journey for lower-secondary learners aged 13 to 14 — published under its working title ‘Primary School Children (13-14)’ — with facilitator notes, games and experiment journals. Pilot it with one class and your notes shape the final version. Open the toolkit →

High school toolkit (open draft)

A hydroponics and sensors project for ages 15 to 19: student teams build a small system, collect their own data and interpret it. Piloting this draft with your learners is a fundable project activity in its own right. Open the high school toolkit →

10-Day Growing Guide (open draft)

The universal seed-to-harvest guide that gives any unit its structure and timing, so the science lines up with the harvest. It is the backbone the other toolkits stand on. Open the growing guide →

Our track record is deliberately stated plainly. The microgreens methodology was born inside European Solidarity Corps project 2024-1-EL02-ESC51-VTJ-000225260 and has run since 2025 with international volunteers. Behind it stands the organisation EVEC Athens (evec.org.gr), accredited for Erasmus+ Youth and working in EU projects since 2017, with 20+ delivered; the portal has been live since August 2025; workshops run in Athens with real groups. We would rather show you published work you can inspect today than quote figures we have not yet published.

See everything we have built →

Learn with us

Three free, self-paced courses are live and complete in the EVEC Microgreens Academy, including one designed for educators. They are open educational resources — take them yourself or use them with your group. This list updates as new courses are published.

All courses live in the EVEC Microgreens Academy.

From the knowledge base

New classroom-ready writing is added to the portal regularly, including the Science Library, where we rewrite peer-reviewed microgreens research in plain language. We keep the caveats, the sample sizes and the uncertainty — which makes the rewrites honest source material for older students learning to read science critically.

Browse the full collection on the blog.

How a partnership works

  1. Tell us your subject focus, your age group and the term you are planning, and whether you teach one class or coordinate a whole partnership.
  2. We point you to the right toolkit and the growing guide, and agree which materials you will pilot.
  3. You run the ten-day unit with your students and send back notes, results and honest feedback.
  4. Together we refine the materials, document the outcomes for dissemination, and if you want a wider School Education partnership, contact us and we will plan it with you.

Job shadowing in Athens (KA122)

If you are planning KA122 short-term mobility for school staff, the organisation behind the methodology, EVEC Athens, can host a job-shadowing visit. Your teachers spend time in our working growing space in Athens — a real teaching and growing space, not a demonstration corner — and shadow how the team and international volunteers prepare and run workshops. They go home with the routines, the materials list and the confidence to run the unit in their own classroom.

An example of the role we could take

The sketch below is an illustrative example, not a fixed offer — the real division of work is agreed with the consortium. In a School Education partnership, a natural work package for us looks like this:

  • We supply the draft classroom toolkits and a short method briefing to partner schools.
  • Partner schools pilot the ten-day unit with their learners and return structured feedback through the toolkit feedback forms.
  • EVEC integrates the feedback, finalises the materials, publishes them on this portal as an open-licensed version 1.0, and hosts a job-shadowing visit so partner teachers see the practice behind the pages.

Deliverables: the finalised open-licensed toolkit v1.0, and a pilot report documenting what the classrooms changed and why.

Looking for a different angle? From languages to art to inclusion, every subject and school theme has a microgreens hook. Find yours and send us your idea.

The methodology: this portal is the home of the microgreens methodology — one hands-on way of learning that works for any vocation and any age, running since 2025.

The organisation behind it: EVEC Athens (European Voluntary and Educational Center), an accredited Greek NGO working in European projects since 2017 · OID E10172681 · PIC 909448430 · Erasmus+ Youth accreditation 2023-1-EL02-KA150-YOU-000188397 · ESC Quality Label 2023-1-EL02-ESC50-QLA-000195138 — both valid until 2027. Verify in the EU organisation registry (search for OID E10172681), see the track record, or visit the organisation at evec.org.gr.

Let’s build a project together

Tell us what you are planning and we will reply by email. One message to erasmus@evec.org.gr reaches the whole team.

Contact us

Co-funded by the European Union.
This portal presents the microgreens methodology; the organisation behind it is EVEC Athens — the European Voluntary and Educational Center (evec.org.gr). Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.