Kitchen gardening with one indoor windowsill
December 21, 2016 1:21 AM
We live in a small apartment with no outdoor space and one available sill, and we also like cooking and eating green things. In an ideal world, I'd have a small kitchen garden to supply us with salads and herbs. Can you help us get a little bit closer to that?
We're in a small urban flat, and have decided to stay here for a couple more years. The major disadvantage is that we have absolutely no outdoor space, or even space for a window box. I'd love to cheer us both up about that by managing to at least grow something we can use in cooking, and I don't have the capacity right now to look for an allotment. I've done container gardening for vegetables before with success but am not super experienced by any measure.
The sill is about 10cm/4" wide, at the bottom of a sash window, and it's above a radiator. (We have two similar sills in bedrooms but this one at least has a small desk by it and won't result in soil-in-bed accidents.) It gets a full day of light from the southeast, and we're in Ireland. We cannot mount things to the wall.
My partner's a great cook and uses a ton of basil, coriander/cilantro, flat leaf parsley, and other herbs - mostly vegetarian cooking but he eats meat too. I'd love to be able to supply us with lettuces and spinach and herbs, and can't wait until we have garden space, but I'd settle for even successfully keeping one of the herbs in supply.
Have you managed to grow anything successfully in a similar set-up? What worked, what didn't, and what would you recommend?
Thank you!
We're in a small urban flat, and have decided to stay here for a couple more years. The major disadvantage is that we have absolutely no outdoor space, or even space for a window box. I'd love to cheer us both up about that by managing to at least grow something we can use in cooking, and I don't have the capacity right now to look for an allotment. I've done container gardening for vegetables before with success but am not super experienced by any measure.
The sill is about 10cm/4" wide, at the bottom of a sash window, and it's above a radiator. (We have two similar sills in bedrooms but this one at least has a small desk by it and won't result in soil-in-bed accidents.) It gets a full day of light from the southeast, and we're in Ireland. We cannot mount things to the wall.
My partner's a great cook and uses a ton of basil, coriander/cilantro, flat leaf parsley, and other herbs - mostly vegetarian cooking but he eats meat too. I'd love to be able to supply us with lettuces and spinach and herbs, and can't wait until we have garden space, but I'd settle for even successfully keeping one of the herbs in supply.
Have you managed to grow anything successfully in a similar set-up? What worked, what didn't, and what would you recommend?
Thank you!
We buy a basil plant from the supermarket, repot it into a slightly larger pot with fresh compost, put it on the windowsill, and it stays alive for a surprisingly long time. Generally it only dies when we go away for a few days and it dehydrates.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:36 AM on December 21, 2016
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:36 AM on December 21, 2016
For pure nutrition, mass, and simplicity, sprouting is the way to go. Many winters I keep 2-3 jars going at a time. Since there's no soil involved, it could be a way to make use of the sills in your bedroom, and they don't even need to be in sunlight for their first couple days.
Covering jars with cheesecloth makes them easy to rinse and drain, but I have a set of plastic screens designed to fit on canning jars that I like even better.
posted by metasarah at 2:38 AM on December 21, 2016
Covering jars with cheesecloth makes them easy to rinse and drain, but I have a set of plastic screens designed to fit on canning jars that I like even better.
posted by metasarah at 2:38 AM on December 21, 2016
If you have fluorescent bulbs in some of your fixtures, you can grow perfectly healthy plants with them, so a living room end table may be a legit plant growing spot with the right bulb in your lamp.
If you're serious about production you need two bulbs, one toward the red end of the spectrum and one toward the blue (we grow plants on a rack in our basement this way) but it will also work with a "full spectrum" or "daylight" bulb bought at any home store and popped in a regular lamp. I mean your parsley won't win any contests for lushness but you can totally grow a nice parsley for eating with regular residential fluorescent bulbs.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:43 AM on December 21, 2016
If you're serious about production you need two bulbs, one toward the red end of the spectrum and one toward the blue (we grow plants on a rack in our basement this way) but it will also work with a "full spectrum" or "daylight" bulb bought at any home store and popped in a regular lamp. I mean your parsley won't win any contests for lushness but you can totally grow a nice parsley for eating with regular residential fluorescent bulbs.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:43 AM on December 21, 2016
Our basement garden is a set up similar to this, btw, but homemade. They also make some tabletop versions and two-shelf versions for smaller spaces, in case you do want to go for the full on grow system. People sometimes put them in entryways or closets or awkward corners.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:48 AM on December 21, 2016
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:48 AM on December 21, 2016
Seconding basil. Our basil plant thrived on a narrow windowsill with less than a full day of sunlight and kept us in "We need to use this basil now before it takes over the apartment; we're having pesto tonight" meals right up until the baby was born, and we stopped watering it.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 4:54 AM on December 21, 2016
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 4:54 AM on December 21, 2016
Arugula will grow happily through much torture. If you sow new seeds every two weeks or so, you'll have a pretty consistent supply of peppery baby greens. If you let one (or more) of the attractive plants go to seed, you'll be in arugula for the rest of your life. One plant makes copious amounts of seed and makes many pretty flowers. It's generally quite resistant to a lot of the pests that trouble indoor tender greens.
For what it's worth, when I've grown basil indoors it's needed a south-facing window. It can handle limited light, but it seems to want that light to be fairly direct. I've never been able to get it to grow appreciably well in our (north-facing) kitchen window. We've had better, but still limited, success with cilantro and chives in the same space.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:18 AM on December 21, 2016
For what it's worth, when I've grown basil indoors it's needed a south-facing window. It can handle limited light, but it seems to want that light to be fairly direct. I've never been able to get it to grow appreciably well in our (north-facing) kitchen window. We've had better, but still limited, success with cilantro and chives in the same space.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:18 AM on December 21, 2016
Basil and rosemary both grow very easily on our kitchen windowsill, and both are much tastier picked fresh off than plant than dried.
posted by Cranialtorque at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2016
posted by Cranialtorque at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2016
If you stick stems of basil in a jar of water it will last forever and grow roots. I'm not sure it will grow more leases though.
posted by BoscosMom at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2016
posted by BoscosMom at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2016
Seconding the rec to grow sprouts. Great soilless kitchen growing project. My favorite method is to use a mason jar fitted with a mesh lid (you can cut your own to fit using window screen). Add seeds and rinse as often as you can remember to. Between rinses, store jar upside down in a round bottomed bowl, so the water never collects near the mouth of the jar but instead continues to drain between rinses.
When I rinse, I like to drain the jar while rotating it so that most of the seeds (and later, the sprouts,) stick to the sides of the jar. This (in my imagination) maximizes the light that each sprout receives.
posted by phreckles at 11:29 PM on December 21, 2016
When I rinse, I like to drain the jar while rotating it so that most of the seeds (and later, the sprouts,) stick to the sides of the jar. This (in my imagination) maximizes the light that each sprout receives.
posted by phreckles at 11:29 PM on December 21, 2016
Basil and rosemary both grow very easily on our kitchen windowsill, and both are much tastier picked fresh off than plant than dried.
These are both great herbs to have available fresh, but make sure you plant them in separate containers. Basil needs a decent amount of water but rosemary prefers much drier, well drained soil.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:32 AM on December 22, 2016
These are both great herbs to have available fresh, but make sure you plant them in separate containers. Basil needs a decent amount of water but rosemary prefers much drier, well drained soil.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:32 AM on December 22, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:59 AM on December 21, 2016