windowsill kitchen garden « Penny Golightly

Event: My Seedy Valentine

November 8th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

If you have a small kitchen garden, or you’re growing edible plants on windowsills or in window boxes, you only need a few seeds to fill the whole space with plants. Unfortunately, you usually have to buy the seeds in large quantities, and they don’t always stay fresh and viable for that long after you’ve opened the packets.

It’s a bit of a waste, and it doesn’t help you to get much variety into what you’re growing, and variety is half the fun. To partly counteract this, I sometimes swap a few seeds and bulbs with other small gardeners via websites here and there, although it’s a rather piecemeal process. It got me thinking about how great it would be to get all my swaps done in one go next year so I could get straight on with the sowing and growing, and how other urban gardeners were probably in the same position.

So I’ve decided to arrange a swap shop for urban gardeners in early 2012, before the growing season starts. I’ve picked Sunday the 5th of February, the weekend before Valentine’s Day, which will give growers enough time to start off the earliest seedlings. The location isn’t decided yet, but it will be a central London location where people can drop in after lunch to chat and swap. Probably a cafe or a pub where we can book a booth or table.

Who’s invited? Anyone who wants to grow edible plants:

On a windowsill (even if it’s only a couple of pots of herbs)
In window boxes
In pots on a patio or fire escape
In a small garden
On an urban allotment

All you need to do is turn up on the day and bring at least one thing to swap, whether it’s seeds, bulbs, seedlings or rooted cuttings. Please don’t bring anything that’s been opened for more than a year, or is past its sow-by date, and make sure you know what the variety of the plant is – instead of just ‘tomato’, be able to tell people it’s a ‘Marmande tomato’ and so on, so they can find out how to look after it.

The plants can be from any of these categories:

Herbs
Vegetables and salads
Fruit trees/bushes/crowns – ones suitable for small gardens only, please
Edible flowers
Plants that encourage bees and other good wildlife
Companion plants that protect edible plants from pests or diseases

If you’re an experienced gardener, why not stick around for a chat and a drink or two, and pass on your tips and skills to the newer gardeners. I’ll bring along a few small envelopes too, in case people want to split up larger packets between several swappers.

There will be more announcements nearer the time about location and the plants on offer, but for the time being can I get a rough idea of how many people might be interested in joining in? Leave a quick message in the comments below or drop me a quick email at penny @ pennygolightly dotcom.

Tags: get seeds for free by swapping your extra ones, kitchen garden, not as filthy as it sounds if you don't count the compost, swap meet for gardeners, swapping party, urban garden, windowsill kitchen garden
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Windowsill kitchen garden update: Late February

February 21st, 2011 by Penny Golightly

It’s time to get more growing on the windowsill, so my latest sowings are heat-loving plants that need relatively high temperatures to germinate and won’t mind the central heating and the South-facing location.

Since it’s only February I’m not getting ahead of myself, and am mostly growing plants that are likely to stay on the sill throughout the summer. This includes:

Sweet peppers (traffic light mix from last year)
Aubergines (Black Beauty from last year, and some free mini-aubergine seeds kindly donated by @Amberlaw via the magic of twitter)
Chilis (Cayenne and Hungarian Hot wax saved from last year, Serrano seeds pilfered from Wahaca at the weekend, and early Jalapenos where I went kerrrazy and bought some new seeds)

Apart from the Jalapeno seeds there’s been no real outlay. I mixed some leftover peat-free compost with sand to make potting compost, and I have pots and propagators to re-use from last year. Very thrifty so far.

Tomatoes can wait until next month, as the sunlight isn’t strong enough yet and I don’t want to end up with a load of spindly, leggy plants. There will probably be enough room for two of the cordon types if I rig up some canes and cables for them to grow up, and if they get too big for their boots then it’ll be easy enough to pinch out the ends of the vines.

The end effect is going to be like a mini greenhouse by the summer. Can’t wait.

Are you growing any food on your windowsill this Spring? Tell me all about it please.

Tags: eat well for less money, kitchen windowsill gardening, money saving tips, windowsill kitchen garden
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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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