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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 9

April 11th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Lots of lovely green growy stuff this week. My free alfalfa seeds arrived on Friday, so I soaked them overnight, rinsed them a couple of times on Saturday, and left them draining this morning in daylight. I hope they’re easy and quick to turn into sprouts – it would be an efficient use of the remaining space, which is now at a premium.

My other new addition is some closely-sown radish seeds to try growing them as microgreens:

The pot that was new last week is doing OK now – spinach at top left, rocket top right, land cress at the bottom:

Those Salad Bowl lettuces have revived after their recent strop:

While the spring onions have improved, I think they take too long to grow and probably use up too much space that could be given over to faster or more expensive crops.

My crazy beans got even crazier. I’m going to have to cut one of them back:

Cucumber plants doing really well:

The biggest chore of the weekend was pricking out all the tomato plants and potting them up. They all germinated, all grew OK, and all seem to be fine in their new pots. Which, I think, is rather unusual. Here are eight of the 32 surviving plants: