grow your own food indoors « Penny Golightly

Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 12 and 13

May 14th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

It’s all been a little hectic at Golightly Towers for the past couple of weeks, so here’s a quick windowsill catch-up for you. One lovely thing that’s happened is that the garden’s going to be featured in Time Out next week, so look out for it if you’re in London and happen to wander into a newsagent’s shop around that time.

Meanwhile, we’ve had quite a few plates of salad, loads of herbs on our pizza and pasta and some more beans, and there’s an outside windowbox of goodies now too.

The usual suspects:

The windowbox of salads:

Herbs going wild:

A cucumber plant that had to be repotted (with a few added peas, baby lettuce, pea shoots etc), which is already growing baby cucumbers:

Flowering tomato plants:

Chilis and sweet peppers making buds:

Indoor spinach, land cress and rocket ready to eat:

Beans, radishes and salad already eaten:

And say hello to my little friend – a fully loaded mini greenhouse….

…complete with monster courgette plant:

Are you growing any herbs or veggies at the moment? Any success stories or tips?

Tags: grow your own food indoors, grow your own salad, growing food indoors, growing herbs indoors, mini greenhouse, windowsill kitchen garden
Posted in Food and drink | 7 Comments »

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
Posted in Home & garden | 3 Comments »

Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 6

March 18th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Week six of trying to grow all kinds of tasty foods on an inside windowsill. Still trying to get as much deliciousness as possible for the least amount of outlay. What’s growing and what’s not?

The pea shoots have had their fish and chips. They’ve turned into mushy peas and aren’t going to give us a third crop. The first two rounds were great though, two gourmet bunches of pea shoots in one month from a tiny handful of peas and the smallest amount of soil-free compost. Will start another batch at the weekend and ditch the old ones:

The parsley is doing really well, so here’s the last pic of that:

Mint’s catching it up, finally, and the dill is putting out its first true leaves. Basil’s written off until April.

The spicy leaf mix is still fairly useless. Will probably sow another batch next month in a different container.

The iceberg lettuces got off to a good start but are a bit leggy now. Not sure if they need more sun or less. Any ideas?

The mustard greens seem really happy, and the salad bowl lettuces I sowed in the mini propagator four days ago are sprouting already.

So far so good with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and the mini chili plant:

Finally, the radish tops were so delicious that I’m probably going to grow them all year round as microgreens. The variety I used was Cherry Belle, if you’d like to give it a go too. The flavour was sweet and mild, and you get fairly big fast-growing dark green leaves with red stems.

Have also sowed small pots of chervil and spring onions, but they are supposed to take a long time to germinate, so no pics of empty containers here. If there’s time at the weekend, will start off some land cress and baby leaf spinach too, to see how they get on.

So far the winners here are: pea shoots, common (curled) cress, mustard greens, parsley and radish tops. It might change as we go into Spring and Summer, who knows?

Are you growing any windowsill food? What are you having the most luck with so far?

Tags: grow your own food indoors, grow your own salad, growing food indoors, how to grow pea shoots, kitchen windowsill gardening, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
Posted in Home & garden | 2 Comments »