Comments on: Kitchen windowsill gardening

By: Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:50:34 +0000

Hi Amy, thanks for your post! Have been looking at what you’ve been growing and it looks delicious. It’s been a good year for tomatoes for both of us, I think. The windowsill at Golightly Towers is doing well generally, if you’d like to visit the home page and look at some more recent posts on here. P x

By: Amy

Amy — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:13:16 +0000

Penny, just stumbled across this blog post on windowsill gardening and it’s great to see others trying the same as me. I too am seeing what produce I can grow on my three sunny windowsills this year. So far chillies, tomatoes and herbs have come up trumps and it looks like I might have the very beginnings of a couple of sweet peppers on the way!

By: Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:23:43 +0000

Hi Sophie – I saw the Nigel Slater thing too, mmmm, tasty! I’ve been buying dried seed peas from gardening suppliers and have had success with those. I’ve used ordinary varieties, but some sprouters say that sugar snap and mange tout peas make the best pea shoots. Can’t say I’ve tried planting food grade dried peas – wonder if they’re treated to stop them sprouting? I hear that’s the case with a lot of garlic in the supermarket. Haven’t grown garlic recently, but remember planting it a clove at a time, so each one turned into a bulb of its own. For more detailed garlic advice, you could try following @MarkDoc on Twitter as he seems to know quite a lot about it. Good luck with the growing! P x

By: Sophie

Sophie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:52:37 +0000

Penny – great site and you have spurred me on to try some microleaves to add to my collection. Question: despite a lot of googling I can’t find the definitive answer to growing peashoots! Nigel Slater was doing this on his Simple Suppers programme on Thurs and he said ‘just plant some dried peas’; elsewhere I have read that you just use the seeds for normal garden peas. What’s the best way – and what kind of dried peas am I looking for? Also – garlic – there is conflicting advice out there – do you plant the whole bulb or just the cloves? Hope you can help, keep the posts coming and I’ll subscribe to your Twitter too ) Happy growing!

By: Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:54:08 +0000

You made your own compost bin? That’s seriously impressive, Miss B. I would love to know how you went about it but will have to explain why later…

By: Miss Believer

Miss Believer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:13:16 +0000

So useful, thank you! I’m desperate to start growing stuff this year, I’ve even made my own compost bin!x

By: Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:16:32 +0000

Hey Revanche, we were doing the same thing with packets of rosemary – use two sprigs then watch as another six went soggy in the fridge. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with on your kitchen windowsill! I’ll post some pictures soon.

By: Revanche

Revanche — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:54:24 +0000

Every single time we have to buy a packet of fresh herb and only use a pinch of it, I wish we had a kitchen garden. I’d love to grow some basil at least, it smells lovely and it’s so expensive at the grocer’s!

I’ll be using this post as a guide as I experiment.

By: Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:46:51 +0000

Thank you so much for your comment. If you want to try herbs without too much outlay there’s a great £1 starter pack in Poundland at the moment. It contains parsley, thyme, basil, mint, dill and chives, most of which should grow happily.
http://www.poundland.co.uk/product-range/a-z/kitchen-herbs—6-in-1-pack/

PS I don’t have shares in Poundland, honest! Stay cheerful and I look forward to reading your next blog post.

By: The Happiness Project London

The Happiness Project London — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:16:41 +0000

Great post! One of the HPL rules (http://thehappinessprojectlondon.wordpress.com/about/) is to nurture something, and I think gardening is wonderfully calming….I seem to have an amazing capacity to kill any herbs I plant, but you’ve inspired me to try again!