A BOX OF TREATS
IF YOU LIKE A WINDOWBOX, WHY NOT MAKE IT USEFUL AS WELL AS BEAUTIFUL BY GROWING SOME EDIBLE CROPS IN THERE
Photography: SARAH CUTTLE Words: ALEX MITCHELL
There’s something nice about being able to lean out of the window and pick a handful of salad leaves or snip a few edible flowers. If you have no outside space there is still plenty you can grow on window sills. Even if you have a garden, how convenient to have herbs and leaves literally outside the kitchen door. The key to a successful harvest from these exposed, shallow, containers is to grow crops that suit them. Luckily, as well as those mentioned here, there are plenty of them; trailing tomatoes, radishes, strawberries, chillies and herbs all thrive in windowboxes.
Edible flowers
Growing a few flowers alongside your fruit and vegetables is always a good idea, not only because they look beautiful but because they lure pollinating insects. When they are also edible and can be thrown on top of salads to transform a pile of leaves, even better.
Windowboxes are ideal for growing these plants because many varieties are fairly drought-tolerant. Also, you can see the flowers up close and snip a few in their prime. Either buy young plants in early summer or sow seed from mid-spring in small pots.
Some flowers, such as the petals of marigolds or whole viola flowers, taste of little but look beautiful strewn over cold dishes. Others, like nasturtium flowers (pictured, above right), bring a silky pepperiness to salads – and you can eat the young leaves and crunchy seed pods, too. Borage has a subtle cucumber taste and the star-shaped flowers look amazing suspended in ice cubes for impressive drinks, while cornflowers have a spicy kick. Chive flowers taste like chive leaves and runner bean flowers, like bean pods. COLOURFUL EATING Uplifting orange Pot marigolds (such as ‘Indian Prince’); nasturtiums. Bold blue Borage; cornflowers. Scarlet Dwarf runner beans, such as ‘Hestia’. Delicate white and pink Viola tricolor; chives.
Grow your own supermarket salad bag
We all love these collections of purple and green springy leaves and stems but who can finish a whole bag without half of it turning to mush? Grow your own (pictured, above right) and you’ll save yourself a few pounds and always have a fresh bowlful to cut. Either sow direct into the windowbox or raise seedlings in small pots and transplant them when big enough to handle.
WHEN: Mid-spring to late summer You will need 1 medium windowbox Peat-free, organic, multi-purpose compost 1 packet of spinach seeds 1 packet of lamb’s lettuce seeds 1 packet of red-stemmed ‘Rhubarb’ chard seeds
HOW: Fill the windowbox with compost to within 5cm of the top and tap it on the table to settle the compost. Visually divide the container into three sections and sprinkle the seeds evenly, about 3cm apart. Cover the seeds with a handful of compost so they are about 0.5cm deep. Water well and place on a sunny window sill. When the plants are large enough to harvest, simply snip leaves as you want them. Combined, these leaves make a good side salad with raw beetroot, chopped into matchsticks. Mix well and drizzle with a tart salad dressing – citrus or vinaigrette – before eating.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR WINDOWBOX HAPPY
By necessity, long, thin and shallow, windowboxes tend to dry out quickly and it can be challenging to keep them well watered in hot weather. They may need watering twice a day (early in the morning and evening) especially if they are on a windy ledge in full sun.
If you have a ledge that is open to rainfall, that will help but it’s still worth adding a handful of water-retaining crystals to boxes in summer to keep the compost moist. Soil-based composts tend to dry out more slowly than multi-purpose ones, so these are worth considering – or use a compost that contains wool, as these retain water better. Mulching the surface reduces water loss through evaporation. Slate chippings look great, and gravel or wood chips also work.
Boxes with integral reservoirs and/or trays beneath are invaluable. Use shadier sills for salads, keeping sunny ledges for Mediterranean herbs. If you are a forgetful windowbox waterer, try these droughttolerant plants: chillies, summer purslane, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, oregano. Adapted from Crops in Tight Spots by Alex Mitchell (Kyle Books). Photography: Sarah Cuttle.