Gardening in the window

It’s only the end of April, but already we’ve had some good luck growing food from seeds. Mike began the project at the end of January by planting seeds for a variety of lettuces, radishes, and mustard. During the ice storm at the beginning of February, our little window garden took shape:

Thanks to some bright sun, in March we had our first real “harvest.”

Since then we’ve enjoyed probably a dozen lettuce salads, 12 or 15 radishes, and a few side dishes of sautéed mustard greens. (We’ve also tried eating the radish greens. They’re prickly when raw, but pretty decent when cooked with the mustard.) It’s a modest success — we’re not saving a bunch of money at the grocery or anything — but I think it’s something to be proud of, considering that we don’t have a yard for a proper garden.

The next phase of the container garden is in development. I’ve got 6 healthy tomato plants shooting up, along with some jalapeño plants, thyme, some spinach of questionable health, and a store-bought strawberry plant that may or may ever show signs of life. Mike’s started up again with pole beans, cabbage*, and something else I can't remember. Warm weather had better come soon so we can move the containers to the balcony; conditions are getting pretty crowded in the windowsills.


*Mike wants to do some guerilla gardening when the cabbages get bigger and see how long he can grow them outside in the landscaping without the lawn crew/maintenance staff clearing them out. Worth a try.