Friday, March 14, 2008

Growing lettuce and herbs indoors

It seems that ever since daylight savings time hit this past Sunday, I've been even more impatient to get my square foot garden started. Considering the snow's only just today melted away, I've got a little while before I'll be harvesting much of anything; our last frost date here is around mid-May, from what I can ascertain. Even though I know one morning I'll wake up and it will be August and I'll wonder where the time went, I still get antsy now, so I decided to try growing a few things indoors.

I cook so much I've always thought I should grow some herbs in the kitchen windowsill, but somehow I've never gotten around to it. Until recently I'd never had any luck with indoor plants, so I let that discourage me, plus sheer laziness, you know. But this year already I've got cute little basil, parsley, and chives going, and I'm going to think about starting some shiso today as well. It's not commonly used in the US, I don't think, but I love the way it tastes and it's especially good during the hot summer. Anyway, the basil in the picture in an earlier entry has already been repotted into something a bit larger, and it's looking quite nice; the parsley has come up, and the chives are getting quite tall.

I've also got some lettuce going: I planted the black-seeded Simpson in a Ziploc bag full of potting soil as suggested in several places online. The seeds sprouted within two days - now that's instant gratification. I have to admit I'm still a little wary of growing anything in a Ziploc bag, but we'll see how it goes - and so far, so good.

All in all, I'm really pleased with my indoor light setup since it allows me to grow these things indoors rather than waiting for the actual warm weather to commence. Hopefully the experiments turn out well....

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