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?

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?

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?

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?

Then I heard about a second method that was supposed to be faster, so I tried that way too last weekend. You soak the seed peas overnight in a shallow dish of lukewarm water, then drain and rinse them in the morning, before adding them back to the dish and soaking in fresh lukewarm water for the rest of the day. After two soaks, all your peas should have tiny sprouts starting to form on them. (If not, give them one more drain, rinse and 8-hour soak for luck).

Then you take the sprouting peas and pop them in a pot on top of some compost, keeping the peas one layer thick rather than piling them up on top of each other. Water gently, place some damp kitchen paper over the top of the pot, and then cover tightly with kitchen foil to keep the light out. Leave the peas in a warm place, like the top of the fridge or a shelf over a radiator for 3 to 4 days, watering a little each day. After that, remove the foil and paper and put the pot on the windowsill for 3 to 4 days. After about 8 days (probably less in warmer weather) your pea shoots are ready to harvest.

Look at the difference between method 1 (traditional) on the left, and method 2 (pre-soaking and using warmth) on the right.

In this pic the second batch had just been moved to the windowsill, and was a week behind the first batch. There was a 100% germination rate in the second batch, but as you can see less than half the peas in the first batch sprouted. They’re all getting cropped tomorrow for a fancy salad, but from now on I’ll be sticking to method 2 because it’s so much quicker and there’s a lot less waste.

The final pics:

Other windowsill happenings: the parsley’s growing very well, and there are now two tiny chili seedlings to pot up as soon as they’re a little bigger. The mint and the basil are still being a bit feeble, but that’s probably because it’s been so cold and grey for the last two weeks, and the salad leaves are looking like overgrown cress and not doing very much. Things will probably improve as we head further into Spring and the weather warms up.

How’s everyone’s windowsill gardening coming along so far?

EDITED TO ADD: We now have a little online club for windowsill growers to swap tips, ideas and bargains. 100% free to use and non-profit. It’s right here on the Penny Golightly forum – anyone can read the comments, and it’s really easy to sign up if you’d like to join us and make your own posts and ask questions. Please feel free to have a look.