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Windowsill vegetables

Don’t have a garden? You can still get a good harvest of vegetables just by growing on your windowsills.

Living in a flat with a balcony isn’t the worst thing in the world. For one thing, I have a wonderful outdoor space high above the ground to hide and relax. But even if I didn’t have the balcony, it wouldn’t stop me gardening.

If you have a windowsill that gets sun for some of the day, then you can grow a nice hearty crop of vegetables there.

The easiest plants to grow are salads and herbs, as this bypasses the need for any pollinators, but this year, I am having a go at tomatoes in my windowgrow to see what happens. I’m likely to need to hand-pollinate them with an old electric toothbrush, which will doubtless agitate anyone glancing into the window at the time, but if it means sweet, juicy tomatoes growing next to my bed, I’m all for that.

At this time of year, there is barely an inch free on my windowsills as I prepare salad plants for the balcony and pumpkins for the allotment. I tend to start the pumpkin seeds in newspaper pots in a propagator on a south-facing window, then move the plants to an even sunnier south-facing window once they have reached the top of the propagator lid and grow on until planting out time. The salads are all grown on the north-facing windowsills, which are still large and light, but lack direct sunlight. The salads don’t mind this, and it means their soil takes longer to dry out.

In the colder months, I use plastic lids over the seed trays to give the plants that extra little bit of warmth to get them going. I know that the temperature on windowsills can also swing dramatically, with the heat from radiators below fighting the cold air outside. So the plastic propagator lids help to keep the temperatures a little more stable by creating a microclimate for the plants.

In the summer the windowsills can become very warm indeed, and the sun is magnified through the glass, which can be too much for many plants, especially peashoots and salads. This is why I move them to the north side of the house, and I also leave a window open (this is one of the luxuries of living on the top floor of a block of flats) to allow the air to circulate and cool the plants. Planters such as the windowgrow are very helpful in these circumstances as they self-water and prevent the earth drying out and the salads wilting badly during the day while I am at work.

Do you have no outdoor space? What are your strategies for getting a big indoor harvest?

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