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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 10

April 18th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

I’ve had a real stroke of luck this weekend – I was given a mini greenhouse as a gift, so have managed to get some of the overcrowded windowsill sorted out. The dinky greenhouse is now full of baby tomato plants, and I sowed a couple of trays of various salad leaves and herbs as well for good measure.

Meanwhile, back on the windowsill, the not-so-dwarf beans are about to burst into flower. And they’re too tall to go into the greehouse, so maybe I’ll have to put them out in a bigger pot on the back doorstep soon.

Here’s the alfalfa, nearly ready to eat. Maybe needs a couple more days. I suspect that this will be a lifesaver in the winter when not much else will grow – it’s quick and it’s healthy, it’s easy to grow (just rinse daily and drain) and it costs pence. OK, maybe it’s not what everyone would call gourmet, but it’s good for a bit of variety.

We’ve had a couple of home-grown salads in the last week. One was a gorgeous mix of pea shoots, baby lettuce and radish microgreens. The pea shoots are re-growing already:

Last week I also learned that some cheap brands of dried peas can be used for pea shoots, including ‘Leo’ brand. They’re 26p a packet in Asda at the moment, or 27p in Tesco, if your local one stocks that type. When I finally get my hands on some I’ll be growing them by the trayful.

The lettuce is supposed to be a ‘cut and come again’ Salad Bowl, but I have my doubts about its ability to regenerate. Seriously, look at the state of it:

We didn’t eat all the radish sprouts – here’s what’s left of the first big batch. They were delicious. Greenhouse or not, I think these, along with cress, pea shoots and herbs, will always have a home on the widowsill.

The land cress, spinach and rocket experiment is not doing much at all. Fingers crossed that at least the rocket will grow this week – it’s like a weed outdoors.

Those spring onions have got their act together now:

Some of the many tomato plants:

I think I’ll grow a couple of them indoors anyway, in case of blight. And finally, the cucumber plant seems set to make an escape bid. Either that or it’s doing an impression of Dustin Hoffman at the end of The Graduate. Not sure which.

Are you growing your own food this year? Do you have any success stories?

Tags: baby leaf salad, grow herbs indoors, grow salad indoors, grow your own pea shoots, growing food indoors, how to grow pea shoots, how to sprout alfalfa, kitchen windowsill gardening, windowsill kitchen garden, windowsill sprouting
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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 8

April 4th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

I have a little confession to make. There are no radishes to look at this week because, er, they were too tasty and the tops and stems ended up in a salad on Thursday, along with all the curly cress, microleaves/salad thinnings of the salad bowl lettuce and the lanky spicy salad baby leaves.

So I thought I’d better try sowing a few more salad/veg seeds, preferably things we haven’t seen yet. Here’s a pot with rocket at the top, spinach on the bottom left, and American land cress just starting to sprout on the bottom right:

I also had some free Little Gem and Serrano chili seeds that I stuck into a couple of pots but they’re not sprouting yet, so maybe next week… But for now, on with the show. Ta-daaaaa, more magic beans:

Thinning out the lettuce taught me a few things:

Lettuces don’t like being moved about
Lettuces don’t like being left in the sun
Lettuces don’t like being too warm

Here they are being a bit finnicky:

Started a new batch of pea shoots:

The mustard greens aren’t doing much, apart from losing their first set of leaves:

The spring onions look suspiciously like anaemic chives, so they have until next week to butch up:

I should probably pot on these overcrowded tomato seedlings:

The cayenne chili pepper is looking OK after being repotted:

I have high hopes for at least one of the cucumber plants surviving and growing well under glass:

The herbs – mint, chervil, dill and basil are all growing in the right direction now too:

I’ve swapped a few excess seeds for a load of alfalfa, but that hasn’t arrived yet. As soon as it does I’ll make some kind of seed/bean sprouter for the windowsill garden and see how that works out.

Are you growing any veg or herbs on your windowsill? If not, are you thinking about it? Any success stories so far this month?

Tags: grow herbs indoors, grow your own food indoors, growing food indoors, how to grow pea shoots, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 7

March 26th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

More green growy happenings from the windowsill at Golightly Towers. We’re now into week seven and there are a few new plants to introduce.

A couple of weeks ago I met up with an old friend for a drink or three. She’s been keeping an eye on the windowsill’s progress and said I should try growing some dwarf French beans in a pot in the kitchen, because she’s had success with them in previous years. Got myself some of these beans in a swap and planted two of them a few days ago, thinking only one would germinate. This is what happened:

Something tells me that these aren’t dwarf beans. The good news is that I didn’t swap them for the family cow and they haven’t reached the clouds yet, so we’re safe for the moment. Probably.

I sowed some spring onions and chervil at the same time, thinking they’d take up to three weeks to germinate. Not so. Guess they heard there was a plant-food-fuelled party going on. Ban this filth! There’s compost everywhere!

That chervil’s even got one of its first true leaves out, the precocious little hussy.

And on to the progress of a few of the old favourites. Dill going nicely frondy:

Marketmore cucumbers growing away nicely:

The remaining radishes are being left to grow on, to see how long they take to make edible roots.

The sun-loving plants all seem to be doing OK, including the chili and the tomatoes. Here’s a snap of the plum tomato seedlings:

And finally the salad bowl lettuce that was just sprouting last week:

Didn’t have time to start off the baby leaf spinach or land cress last week, but will do that this weekend, along with a punnet of rocket, and maybe a few more herbs.

Are you growing any food yourself? If so, how well is it growing?

Tags: Golightly and the giant beanstalk, grow herbs indoors, grow your own food indoors, growing food indoors, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 5

March 11th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Week 5 is here, and the longer days and sunny moments have cheered the windowsill up no end. I thought I’d ring the changes with some of the things I’ve been growing, so off I went back to Poundland for another of their bargain £1 mixed packets of seed.

I bought their ‘fresh salad’ multipack, which contains radish, cress, spring onion, tomato, iceberg lettuce and cucumber, all of which I hear can be grown indoors. The tomato variety is Moneymaker, which I won’t be growing this year as I’ve set my heart on growing other varieties (more about that later). The lettuce will probably be eaten at the baby leaf stage, or there won’t be enough room for it. Iceberg isn’t exactly gourmet, but it does have a mild flavour and a good crunch, and it mixes well with pea shoots.

Speaking of which, I cut the last lot of shoots for a garnish. They tasted as good as the first crop, but there were fewer of them and they grew smaller leaves. To complete the experiment I’ll try to grow a third set of shoots from the same pot, although I’m not too hopeful they’ll be as good. Here’s what they look like now, rather depleted.

Here are some of the herbs: dill (new), mint and parsley. The basil is still being finnicky and I’m probably going to end up re-seeding the pots at this rate. I have loads of different seeds left over from my outdoor herb garden so will probably try a few different varieties on the windowsill too to see how they turn out.

Next up, the radishes and cucumber were planted 6 days ago and are already going strong. They’re the pots on the left. Will be pulling up radish thinnings soon and adding them to salads – sowed 8 seeds as an experiment and wasn’t expecting them to have quite so much oomph. Haven’t started the spring onions off yet, but maybe at the weekend…

Mini-lettuces just sprouted, and all I can say is that I hope the other salad leaves start to take note of their work ethic:

The spicy salad leaves are still looking like overgrown cress, the slackers. Might decide to grow a second batch soon, but start them off in a mini-propagator instead and hot-house the little gits.

Speaking of mini propagators, the tomato seeds I planted (cherry and plum) last week are doing really well.

I’ve been bartering on GardenSwapShop and bidding on eBay to get some more interesting salad seeds too, as cheaply as possible. I now have red and green salad bowl, Lazio spinach, red mustard, lollo rossa and rocket to sow, all of which are cut-and-come again varieties so hopefully we’ll get several crops out of each plant. There’s also some land cress, which is supposed to be easier to grow than watercress, but let’s wait and see.

The total spend so far is £3.99, which I’m hoping will keep me in salad ingredients for several months. About the same price as a couple of bags of supermarket baby leaf salad, and with lots of variety so we don’t get bored.

Are you growing food in your kitchen too? How’s it coming along?

Tags: grow herbs indoors, grow your own pea shoots, growing food indoors, how to grow pea shoots, kitchen windowsill gardening, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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