SPOTLIGHT ON: WINDOWSILL HERBS
Summer may be coming to an end but there’s no need to fall back on jars of dried herbs – instead you can look forward to the new season’s crop from your kitchen windowsill.
All popular culinary herbs do well when grown as pot plants indoors if they are given plenty of light.
And a row of cooking herbs growing in a trough makes for a handy and fragrant indoor window box.
If you sow annual herbs such as basil, chervil, coriander and parsley now, you will be picking them in a couple of months. A small potful of each is enough.
Don’t bother thinning them out, just let them grow as a clump and start cutting the odd pinch as soon as they are big enough.
If you have mint growing in the garden, dig a few roots, lay them flat in a fourinch pot half-filled with seed compost and cover with more compost.
Shoots will appear within a few weeks.
Do much the same with chives. Dig up an old clump and divide it into two or three.
Plant the biggest piece back in the garden and the others in pots to bring indoors. In just a few weeks you will have tender, tasty shoots.
If earlier in the year you rooted cuttings of sage, rosemary or bay, pot up the cuttings now and bring them indoors where they will soon make strong fresh new growth.
All indoor herbs do best if they are watered little and often.
And treat them to regular, well-diluted doses of a liquid