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What can you grow on your windowsill?
First thing’s first — you probably aren’t going to be churning out tonnes of produce. Most of the food plants we grow in the UK aren’t really designed to be grown indoors, where it’s dryer and warmer than they’re used to.
However, the things you will be able to grow – like herbs, small veg and pea shoots – can make brilliant additions to many everyday meals.
Growing Basil
Basil, for instance, is a staple ingredient in almost all Italian cooking and is easily grown on a windowsill. Given enough space in its pot, the right watering regime (little and often) and regular feeds with a watered-down indoor plant-fertiliser of your choice, it can keep producing leaves for a fair few seasons.
You can even make cuttings with just a little bit of know-how — resulting in a theoretically infinite amount of basil!
Growing Lettuce
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to produce giant, supermarket-sized heads of lettuce on a windowsill. Something you will be able to grow, however, are nutrient-packed “microgreens”, ready to eat just two to four weeks after sowing.
Simply sprinkle a few pinches of lettuce seeds into compost-filled pots, cover with a dusting of compost and water well. After a few days, you should start to see the first signs of growth. Continue to water well — lettuce will usually let you know when it’s feeling thirsty by visibly wilting.
Harvest any time from the moment your lettuce has reached between two and four inches in height. One thing you might notice on tucking in is the sweet taste of the leaves! Put simply, this is because your lettuce hasn’t got old enough yet to grow bitter and tough.
I’m sure a few of us know some younger people we could say the same thing about!
Radishes and Beetroots
Radishes are another super-quick salad crop you can grow on your windowsill. Simply sow seeds spaced two inches apart and cover with a generous dusting of compost. Kept well-watered, they should produce a single small, tart, pink radish in a month or so.
You can grow baby beetroots in much the same way. Beets generally grow in clusters, however, so you’ll have to perform some DIY natural selection by thinning them once the seedlings show leaves.
Remember, both radish and beetroot leaves are perfectly edible and can be delicious mixed into salads!
Interestingly, you can snip the bottom chunk (the root ends) of radishes off and replant them to quickly regrow another radish. You can repeat the trick with beetroot tops (not bottoms), though these will usually produce more greens rather than another root.
This doesn’t always work, but it can be a fun experiment to teach children about the resilience of nature!
Pea Shoots
Pea shoots are a great addition to stir fries, salads and sandwiches. They’re delicious and nutritious!
If you soak dried peas from the grocers or the supermarket in water overnight, sow them in an inch of compost, cover them with a generous dusting of compost and keep in a sunny spot, they’ll produce small but serviceable shoots within about a week. Simply cut the shoots at the base and use while fresh.
Replanted peas will crop a second time, though slightly less quickly. Make sure not to let your shoots grow too large, or the plants will become bitter — and better off planted outside!