Growing a Windowsill Herb Garden
A windowsill herb garden can provide you with pleasure, beauty, and a touch of green during the winter months or for those of you who live in an urban environment. Furthermore, growing herbs can give you welcome additions to you pantry and spice racks. This type of herb garden is not at all difficult to start and will thrive as long as you follow a few simple procedures.
First of all, you should if at all possible locate your herb plants in an east, southwest, or south window; this is because those are the windows that actually get the most sunlight during the day, and this will be important (especially in Winter months) because herbs require a lot of sunlight to be grown. You want your herbs to get at least six hours of light a day, so in the months of shorter, darker days you may find that you should add in some fluorescent lighting.
Next, choose containers that will fit into your windowsill but which won’t melt. Terra cotta is a good herb garden pot material that is durable and looks nice. You’ll also want to make sure to allow drainage into a bowl or some other type of reservoir pot. Herbs don’t like their roots to be saturated with water, so you want to allow plenty of drainage and not to overwater them. Only water them when their soil is absolutely dry on top; misting is a good idea for watering in the Fall and Winter when you may have the heat on and the house closed up thereby causing an extra-dry environment.
The soil you use for your windowsill plants cannot be too heavy, and soil for an outdoor garden or that of non-herbal plants is all too heavy. Choose a good quality, lighter-weight potting soil and then add perlite to make it even lighter. Another option is to choose a soilless potting mixture. Place some pebbles in the bottom of your planters to prevent drainage from occurring too rapidly, then pour your mixture overtop. Last, gently place the herbs into the soil.
Herbs don’t need a lot of fertilizer, but you can add compost to the soil every seven weeks or so to help them grow more. In the winter, a good fertilization method is to add a kelp and fish fertilizer every three weeks. Never use chemical pesticides or fertilizer because you are likely going to be eating these herbs.
Make sure that your windowsill garden herb plants are all planted together according to how alike they are in growth. For instance, do not plant annuals and perennials together (to avoid fungus accumulation from the annuals), but do plant shade-lovers together and sun-lovers together. Keep your herbs nicely trimmed so that they will maintain their shapeliness. Before long you’ll be enjoying them in your tea!
Bay leaf, chives, cilantro, dill, mint, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, and thyme are among the best herbs to place in your garden of windowsill herbs. They look lovely, they do well indoors, and they are very useful. Enjoy greening up your house with herbs!
