Windowsill veg

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I’m sure most readers will empathise when I say that the windowsills in our house are full of plants now! Since I don’t have a greenhouse, it’s really the only viable option if I am going to get my plants started soon enough for them to reach maturity at a reasonable time – especially if we have one of our frequent nondescript Summers.

This is not your usual bathroom ornament…

These are Broad Beans (“Stereo”), destined perhaps to form my second crop of this vegetable. I’m still not sure if it is going to be possible to squeeze them in anywhere. They were sown in a “knee-jerk reaction” to the loss (to mice) of my first sowing of beans. They are also a bit of a safety measure just in case the ones I planted out the other day get damaged, possibly by pigeons.

Alongside the Broad Beans are my Sweet Potatoes.

This is very much an experiment for me, initially sparked off by noticing vigorous shoots on some stored tubers originally intended for cooking. Getting information about how to grow them is easy enough, and I am also swapping notes with one or two fellow gardeners on Twitter, which is a good way of judging my efforts alongside those of others. So far everything is going well, and I have two nicely rooted slips, another just about ready to be detached from its parent tuber, and several more shoots emerging too.

I will soon have to decide where these slips will be planted and grown. I think maybe they will initially have to go into smallish pots which I will be able to keep indoors or in one of my plastic mini-greenhouses. Later, they will be transferred to a big tub (maybe).

On the Dining-Room windowsill reside some little Celeriac seedlings (“Monarch”).

They are just producing their first true leaves now, and beginning to look recognisably like Celeriac. They start from very tiny seeds which really need to be reared indoors and planted outside only when they are big enough to fend for themselves.

Next to the Celeriac are four pots of Basil.

I sowed about a dozen seeds in each pot, and have been progressively thinning them, with the ultimate aim of keeping only the best seedling. They are looking good so far, and it will be tough deciding which ones go and which ones live on.

Of course there are also lots of chillis on the windowsills now:

I’m trying to shed the excess chillis now, by giving away some spares. As you may remember I sowed many more than I really needed, just to be sure I had enough good ones. Apart from a protracted (and ongoing) battle with a plague of aphids, the chillis are looking fine now, and I feel relaxed about parting with a few. I plan on retaining about 20 or so – possibly up to 24 – but space limitations will as always be the deciding factor.

Before long I will need to find room for some Tomatoes.

I’m hoping that the weather will improve dramatically fairly soon, because some of these plants are going to have to move outside before long. Their next home will be the mini-greenhouses – though these are currently full of brassica and leek seedlings! “Juggling” is the right word to use here, I think.

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