The great indoors...
Don’t let the cold keep you from enjoying the thrill of home-grown food. It’s time to get your gourmet kitchen kicks by cultivating your veg on a ledge
There is an idea sometimes that once the weather gets cold, gardening for food stops. But that doesn’t have to be the case… there are many things to eat that you can grow indoors in winter.
A lot of it is great fun – and picking fresh food from your own kitchen windowsill is a real privilege.
There are plenty of really good plants you can grow inside all year round that can produce crops for you, even at this time of year.
With windowsill crops becoming ever more popular, here are my favourite six:
CRESS
For starters, try cress. You can germinate cress seeds on a bit of damp kitchen roll placed on a saucer, with the seeds literally sprinkled on top.
The germination time is pretty quick (just a few days) but you also get three kicks – it’s great fun preparing and sowing the seeds, you get the excitement of watching them germinate, and you get to harvest them to have with freshly scrambled egg.
Sprinkle with a dash of salt and cracked pepper, spoon it on to some crusty bread, then scatter some fresh crunchy cress on top. Perfection!
If you sow more seeds every two weeks, you’ll have a continuous supply. Take your cuttings when the seedlings reach 5cm tall.
BASIL
This is perfect for using in most soups, salads and sandwiches to get that Italian taste to your food.
You can buy small basil plants from garden centres then just sit them as a permanent container on your kitchen windowsill – or if you prefer, you can sow basil seeds direct.
The secret with growing indoors is that you want to crop your plants on a regular basis.
The heat in the room tends to draw them up so they grow a bit leggy. So aim to crop and use them regularly to let the plant re-sprout.
Of course, any plants in containers that you’re cropping regularly need a little bit of feed.
Miracle-gro is great for that – you can water it down in recycled plastic bottles and just reuse these as little watering containers.
By regularly feeding, you give the plant the energy to grow more foliage.
MUNG BEANS
Similar to cress, mung beans, often referred to as beansprouts, can grow almost anywhere – and they’re an increasingly popular component of superfood dishes.
These legumes are perfect to grow at home as they are quick and easy.
But they are also hugely nutritious, which is why they get tagged as a superfood. Soak your seeds for eight hours before sowing and place them on to the cloth, jar or seed sprouter.
My top tip is to put a weight on top
Regular feeding gives plants the energy to grow more foliage
of the seeds while they grow – the sprouts will grow thicker and be crunchier because of the pressure.
PARSLEY
Much like the basil, you can grow this from seed or buy small plants. Don’t forget to feed and crop regularly too. Parsley is a beautiful plant – those crinkly, deep-emerald leaves look perfect in dressing or grated on top of new potatoes with butter.
Curly parsley, such as that in my Mr Fothergill’s seed range, can give a richly aromatic flavour to all manner of savoury dishes. You can cut them at any time of year, and regular sowing will result in a plentiful succession of leaves for a small addition into your cooking that packs a punch in the nutrition area.
SPEEDY SALAD
Another easy-grower is speedy salads. Many of the lettuces you might grow outside earlier in the year also work really nicely when grown indoors.
You’re not looking for these plants to get old, just to produce a lot of young fresh foliage that you can clip off and use in salads and sandwiches. I usually have a large pot in a light porch by the back door when it’s not too hot.
When the foliage has matured, crop them and re-water to get another flush of leaves before the plant tires out.
Then use the remaining seeds in the packet to replant. You get hundreds of little seedlets in there so you can just keep going and growing.
MUSHROOMS
There are many different mushroom kits – you can get them from most garden centres or online and, with
Christmas around the corner, these little kits are really something.
They often come with the mushroom compost and pre-spawned substrate, and you just situate them in a dark room or cupboard.
Once they’re ready, you can pick your own fresh button mushrooms for a Christmas Day fry-up.
It’s not just the goodness of growing your own or that it saves money – filling your kitchen with greenery gives it a real living sense as the main source of sustenance and nutrition for yourself and your family.