My first iteration of growing microgreens in my 300 sqft studio apartment was a success! Here are pictures of the setup:
My total setup footprint is about 2x3 ft and I am using the bottom 2 shelves of a cheapo metal garage/storage shelf you can find anywhere, which leaves 3 shelves on top for normal storage. The worm bin started with 1000 worms and I used a plastic container I had on hand. I was a bit worried about using 24 inch lights over 3 trays (width of 30 inches), but I still seemed to have pretty uniform growth across all the trays. The gaps you see on the corners of the middle tray were because I let it dry out a little too much just prior to harvesting so some of the broccoli microgreens began to lean over.
This was a proof of concept so I pretty much followed exactly what Corey's Cave told me to do in his youtube course for microgreens. My trays, seeds, and soil all came from True Leaf Market and the lights were from Amazon and came highly recommended as LED grow lights. I grew broccoli, spicy salad mix, and salad mix with a total yield of about 600g. With a set of trays germinating and another under lights always I could continue with 600g weekly output indefinitely with the current setup.
My next iteration will move towards optimizing the cost of inputs. I plan on growing on paper towel as a grow medium using some Miracle-Gro fertilizer I have on hand and will see if I can get comparable results (I'm still a few months away from harvesting worm castings). As Sky pointed out earlier in the thread, usually the most expensive input per tray of microgreens is the soil. My ideal system would look something like this:
Inputs
-seeds
-water
-paper towel
-electricity (LED lights use 10W/.079A each and I calculate they will last me 9 years at 12 hours per day of use) (not sure on electricity cost because it's included in my rent)
-fertilizer (worm tea from worm bin)
Outputs
-microgreens
-paper towel and roots to feed to worm bin
I think this is a valuable way for the apartment dweller to grow fresh leafy greens in a controlled environment year-round, which could free up outdoor space for staple crops and more exotic fruits and vegetables.