Windowsill Herb Garden
Growing and Using a Windowsill Herb Garden
Have you ever been in the middle of cooking a tasty dish and you think ‘Hmmm… this is great, but it needs a little something.’ Immediatly you start looking around for some herbs to add to the pot, but you’ve run out of preserved herbs. You could of course use fresh herbs, but your garden seems too far away for you to go out and pick them. So what do you do? You have two choices:
A. Sigh and reach for the salt
B. Grow a windowsill herb garden and always have fresh herbs at your fingertips.
This mini herb garden is easy to grow. The most important thing is remember is how small your garden is. Make sure that you don’t chose a herb that is significantly bigger than your container. The last thing you need is an overgrowing herb taking over half your kitchen! The best ones for this kind of garden are the smaller, easier controlled culinary herbs such as basil, mint, chives and parsley. The other very important thing to remember is the amount of sunlight that the window gets. Ideally you want to chose a window that gets at least 5 hours of sunlight. Less than this and you will have to invest in an artificial light.
When you chose a container, make sure that you chose one that is deep enough for your herb. The container should be between 6 and 12 inches deep. First fill up the bottom three inches or so with soil. Make sure that the soil is well-drained and you have something underneath the container to catch the drain off.
Next place your herbs in the container and then add more soil. Be careful to keep at least an inch between the upper level of the soil and the top of the container or wet soil will spill out every time you water it. Not a pleasant thing to clear up!!! Also every month or so add some fertilizer to give your plants some extra nutrients by adding fertilizer. When buying your fertilizer, make sure that the one you want to buy is marked as being suitable for use on edibles. The only thing left to do then is wait until it is time to harvest your herb garden.
That’s it! The best thing is that it probably took you less than 20 minutes to get it ready. So the next time you run out of herbs, you will be able to quickly grab them. Less time cooking, more time enjoying. Sounds great to me!
