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The winter kitchen garden and windowsill

January 24th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

The mini greenhouse and outdoor garden spent most of November and December asleep, or dead, under the frost and snow. Here’s a quick look at what’s survived, often against the odds.

First up, there’s one stick of Brussels left. That’s about six helpings of sprouts (nice halved and added to stir fries), and a full sprout top to cook as spinach/cabbage.

Next, we have the monstrous sprouting broccoli, purple and white varieties. It’s still a little early for them to start making their tasty bits, but I’ll start cutting them off as soon as they appear so the plants start to make more.

There’s also a little Spring cabbage and curly kale, and a few straggly Spring onions…

This growbag contains some unusual winter-variety carrots. I was given a free packet of these seeds in the Autumn and they’ve grown quietly and slowly over the winter. We’ve eaten some of the thinnings already, and the proper carrots should be ready in a few weeks. Quite good timing to fill the ‘hungry gap’ in the middle of Spring.

The mini greenhouse contains some winter sowings of chard, spinach, Arctic King and Tom Thumb lettuce, parsley, coriander, chicory and a few others. With hindsight I should have got these going as soon as I cleared out the greenhouse in the Autumn, to get the seedlings more established before the winter hit. They will be ready in a few weeks, it’ll just take a while longer for them to get going.

The surviving herbs (pic above) are thyme, sage, rosemary, chives, chervil, oregano and peppermint. There is some cold damage but I think it’ll be OK. They just need some dead leaves removing.

On the windowsill indoors we have winter sowings of parsley and coriander, plus a very healthy Sweet Genovese basil that’s survived since last Summer. The cat ate most of my baby lemongrass plant last week, but I hope it might somehow revive itself. Once again, bad kitty, bad.

And last of all we have a cayenne pepper plant, still making me hot chillis. One day M-Cat is going to eat one of these by accident, and I don’t think I’ll be entirely sympathetic when it happens.

In the next few days I’ll be writing about dealing with garden pests on a budget (and/or organically), and working out my wish list for this year’s planting plan. My seeds and new plants budget is strictly capped at £10, but that should be plenty I reckon. Let’s see.

Do you have any kitchen garden plants growing? Has anything survived the harsh winter where you live? Plant-saving tips and any garden gossip welcome!

Tags: British garden kitchen, container gardening, grow chilli peppers indoors, grow veg cheaply, grow your own veg, growing food indoors, growing vegetables cheaply, growing vegetables on a budget, growing your own food in winter, kitchen windowsill gardening, planning your garden for the year, small gardens, urban garden, window boxes, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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More tales from the windowsill garden

November 14th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

By rights, there shouldn’t really be anything much happening on the windowsill in the middle of November, but there’s an interesting mixture of greenhouse transfers, new sowings and late cropping going on.

I picked these today, some ready to eat now and a few to ripen on for later:

There are still two plum tomato plants growing, along with sweet Genovese basil, purple spicy basil and Greek pot basil from summer sowings. One is on its last legs (roots?) and the other is almost certainly going to make it to the end of November. We might get six or seven more fruits from them before they go, not bad at all.

I moved the cayenne chili plant in from the greenhouse about two weeks ago and it seems so much happier indoors, happy to the point of producing another 30 or so flowers. Potentially a lot more of the hot stuff on the way, so I’ve misted the open blooms with a tiny amount of warm water to help them make fruits. The two lemongrass plants came indoors at the same time, and they’re doing better too with lots of new green shoots.

There are also some new sowings: baby salad leaves, land cress, peas (for shoots), parsley, coriander, spinach and giant red mustard. Nice to have a few salady ingredients within easy reach to chuck into sandwiches and side salads.

I’ve scrubbed down and sterilised the mini-greenhouse, and it’s now home to a completely new set of sowings, including leaf beet, Arctic King and Tom Thumb lettuces, Italian chicory, White Lisbon spring onions, lamb’s lettuce, golden purslane, lots of rocket, dwarf kale and more herbs. Will be interesting to see which ones grow the best.

Outside in the garden at the moment there are: Shimonita onions/leeks, spring cabbage, curly kale, mustard greens, mizuna, sorrel, the last few carrots, purple and white sprouting broccoli, and a couple of Brussels sprout plants. On the herb front we have the hardier plants such as sage, thyme, rosemary and chives, plus some surviving mint, chervil and oregano.

If I have time this week then there are a few more bits of preparation for the winter that need doing, mainly sowing some pak choi and a few other oriental leaves, tidying the beds up, sowing green manures and washing out any remaining empty planters.

Are you still getting crops from your summer sowings? Have you planted anything for the winter or early spring this year? Please let me know how you’re getting on, or what varieties you’ve had lots of luck with.

Tags: grow chilli peppers indoors, grow salad indoors, growing food indoors, growing your own food in winter, growing your own gourmet foods, growing your own pea shoots, kitchen windowsill gardening, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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Kitchen garden: October takedown

October 17th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

And now, more fabulous foodstuffs on a shoestring. The kitchen garden is amazingly still giving us a few plum tomatoes and a lot of green beans, although most years these would have been finished weeks ago.

The cherry tomatoes are finished, so I’ve cut them all down and composted them.

This year I’m trying out different seeds for ‘green manures’, to see whether they will partially or fully revive the compost in the planters, and stop weed growth and nutrient loss in the bare patches of ground. It’s a bit late to sow most types of these seeds after the unusually long growing season, but I have some ‘grazing peas’ which are OK to plant in October and November, so fingers crossed.

Canes have been pulled up and cleaned, small pots have been emptied, washed and rinsed out with scalding water, and dead leaves have been raked and swept up. But that doesn’t mean that the garden is shutting down for winter. Far from it…. The big brassicas are only just getting going. The white sprouting broccoli has started its growth spurt, and is already monstrously big like Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors, (shown here with gigantic cat nearby for scale):

And the brussels sprouts should be ready for December. The stems have buttons on them already. Here they are before I took away the dead leaves and gave them a bit of mulch:

The mini-greenhouse is still giving us sweet peppers and chillies, but I’ll bring them back inside to the sunny warm windowsill at the end of the month. Then I’ll plant out my remaining dwarf kale and purple sprouting broccoli seedlings and give the greenhouse a good scrub out with detergent. I’m hoping I can keep a few herbs and hardy salads growing under cover though the colder months, but will write about that later.

Meanwhile, here’s what I brought in at lunchtime: chillies, green sweet pepper, tomatoes to ripen indoors, salad burnet, French beans, fennel, spring onions and radishes. Not bad for the middle of October.

Are you growing any herbs or vegetables at the moment? What have you been doing to get things ready for winter?

Tags: British seasonal food, grow your own herbs, grow your own veg, kitchen garden, windowsill kitchen garden
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Early September in the Kitchen Garden

September 5th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Golightly Gardens has been producing lots of food over the last six weeks, and hopefully most of the current crops will be going strong until October.

We still have lots of cherry and plum tomatoes on the go (luckily no blight round here this year), along with cucumbers, courgettes, French and runner beans, chicory, spring onions, mizuna, rocket and cabbages, and plenty more. The mini greenhouse is home to some very happy cayenne and Hungarian hot wax chillies and Traffic Light sweet peppers, and some Thai lemongrass grown from seed.

Although there’s still a lot to come from what’s already been planted, I’ve found myself looking at this month as the last window for getting some key sowing and planting done. It includes:

Last sequential sowings of rocket, lettuce, radishes etc
Autumn sowings such as Spring cabbage, oriental greens, winter varieties of carrot
Winter-hardy salad and things that might be happy growing in the greenhouse

Since I can’t grow spinach and chard outside thanks to virulent local leaf miner infestations, the indoor windowsill has come to my rescue. There’s baby leaf spinach, rainbow chard and leaf beet growing away happily indoors, along with more tomatoes, dwarf beans, chives, parsley, basil and American land cress. Once the tomatoes have finished for the year, there will be room for lots more microgreens on the windowsill, and the chillies from the greenhouse can come in for the winter too.

I’ve also cleared the gone-over sweetcorn, added new compost and planted out a couple of small purple sprouting broccoli plants in their place. Again, not the most efficient use of space in a small garden, but it’s one of my favourite veggies and tastes best freshly cut. They should grow away quietly over the winter and give a crop in March or April, hopefully.

It’s also the start of the season for planting next year’s fruit bushes and trees, and I’m looking into the tastiest and most cost-effective options at the moment, along with non-edible plants to sow as ‘green manures’ to revive and protect the compost in some of my larger containers when they become vacant in October.

There hasn’t been a glut of anything yet, but I suspect that if we’re in for weeks of rainy, unsettled weather then there’ll be lots of green tomatoes left at the end of September. If that happens, I might get a little W.I. on you and make some spicy green tomato chutney. I draw the line at jam, but chillies and onions and a bunch of spice are right up my street… Does anybody have any nice recipes?

How’s your garden growing? Are you growing any food outdoors, in pots or on a windowsill?

Tags: garden jobs in September, kitchen garden, seasonal vegetables, windowsill kitchen garden
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