Growing Container Vegetables in Bay Window During Winter

Living in Zone 7, I am used to the growing season coming to an end and for everything to take a break for a while.

However, this year, I've decided to try and extend my growing season into the winter! By using a bay window I have available, I'm thinking I can at least keep a steady supply of greens going through the winter. I recently built the shelf (pictured) to house more containers in that sunny window.

Right now I have a couple of bush bean plants (under the shelf) and pictured on top are some spinach and lettuces. I also have more lettuce outside still since we haven't reached below freezing here yet, but we are in November, so I will end up bringing them in soon. 

Not a bad start...the power of gardening in tiny spaces!

A view from inside. I've got my lettuces and spinach up top and beans on the bottom.

This will be a post I'll be adding to as the bay window garden expands. I will post updates every now and then as things happen. Until then, happy fall planting!

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11.26.13

It's late November now and I'm back with an update on the windowsill garden. 

Since the last post, I moved some collards and lettuce inside due to the cold temperatures that were forecast. The sill now looks a lot more full and thing are certainly growing (some better than others).

Check out the garden now! See that little green bean forming?

Top shelf: spinach and lettuces

The blue rubbermaid container on the bottom right are collards and lettuce, I planted two rows of three plants each there. Here is a better view of that:

Not too shabby! Although I think the collards should be larger. They're not really much bigger than my open hand. I know this isn't the same variety I buy at the store, because those collards have completely smooth edges, so maybe this variety doesn't get as big? Other factors could be the tote container, it isn't very deep. The soil mix seems to be holding up very well though, has never been dry or hard, it is well-aerated. For all the soil in these pots I mixed mostly on intuition, varying parts of garden soil (with some fertilizer in it), vermiculite, perlite, lawn lime, and dehydrated manure (Bovung).

According to my records, I planted these on 10/5/13, so assuming a few days until germination, it's been about 6-7 weeks or about 45 days. Apparently collards mature around 85 days but can be harvested beginning at 40.

Above, you can see the biggest collard leaf I cut off. Not exactly winning awards for size!

Here is some mature spinach I harvested at the same time as the collards (also planted around the same time), so this spinach is fully mature. Johnny's Seeds' spinach varieties all mature in 30-40 days.

This harvest is only enough to line one omelette, but they taste at least five times better than the packed store spinach!

Now on to the younger collards:

These plants I know are a little younger than the ones in the tote container, but not by much. Unfortunately I didn't go a very good job of really pinning down when exactly these were planted and germinated and all that good stuff, but I know they are slightly younger. 

I thought  the blue containers would be good for collards because they are deep. Perhaps it would've worked out but for some reason the soil I mixed for those pots got real dense and compacted. I don't feel good about it at all. It might be because they were the last pots I was mixing for and I ran low on manure or maybe I put too much peat in there or too much garden soil with not enough perlite and vermiculite to aerate things. I really want to stay away from peat as a base for my potting mix next time around.

Anyway, we'll see how these turn out, I'm going to let them keep on growing.

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12.9.13

I finally decided to harvest my lettuces and spinach for some salad greens. The lettuces weren't huge, but they were very tasty! The two red leaf varieties and the romaine in the middle were a bit larger than the picture above, but not by much. There were also a couple of smaller ones I had growing on the top shelf (one of them was a bit spicy, not sure what variety it was). I'll have to be better with the labeling next time.

I mixed everything together, added some carrot, radish, and other complements, and had a home grown feast!

Mixing it up here, note the purple green bean! I was able to grab some beans too for the salad.

You can't beat a hand picked salad in December!