Lamb's Lettuce Ready to Eat

We really need to eat these Lamb's Lettuce (Corn Salad, Winter Salad) before the leaves become tough and bitter-tasting. 

But we are debating whether to pick the whole plants and use the trough for something different or just take the outside leaves and leave the plants to keep giving us more - 'Cut-and-come-again'.

It seems a shame to take out the whole plant when they have so many new leaves coming through. It would also make Superlambanana redundant, at least until we grow some more.

A Surprise Pea Flower

A very pleasant surprise this morning as a flower opened on the Garden Pea plant. 

We weren't expecting any yet, it's only a small plant, we haven't even put in any support for it yet, we can see a second bud too.

Having all these plants on a desk makes it very easy to get up close and see the beauty of these delicate flowers - easier to take good pictures too as it's so still :)

Our First Homegrown Spinach Salad

We have eaten our first significant batch of Spinach and the plants look like they'll provide us with a lot more.

With a few leaves of our Basil and some Tomatoes (shop-bought), seasoning and Olive Oil - delicious, fresh and crisp.

And tomorrow we'll be having more of those tasty Pea Shoots.

Desktop Garden 2nd Month Review

Now more than two months since we started our Desktop Garden and you can see it's completely full and very green.

As mentioned in previous posts we put some of the plants on the windowsill so it does spread out a bit but it just about still fits onto the desk.

The Pak Choi are now looking quite plump, the five Tomato plants and four Peppers continue to grow.

We can now grow and eat Cress and Pea Shoots regularly and pick sprigs of Rosemary, Basil and Mint as required.

We've had a few flowers too and looking forward to the Fuchsia coming into bloom later.

The little Thyme seedlings are very slow growing and the Lamb's Lettuce is taking its time to reach the stage where we feel we can start taking some leaves off to eat.

On the whole it's been quite a rewarding month, we just wish we had more room as we have so many unopened packets of seeds.

Little Yellow Flowers in a Tea Caddy

These tea caddies are too good to throw away and the small 7.5cm plant pots fit in perfectly.

The first little yellow flower has opened on the Sanvitalia (creeping zinnia) and there's a few more buds ready to open soon.

Pepper Plants Prosper

We haven't featured the Pepper plants for quite a while and have pretty much just left them to get on with it, only making sure they got their turn on the sunny windowsill.

They're now looking quite big and healthy, maybe the little Doraemon character has been using various gadgets to help them along?

We snacked on a few Spinach leaves today - very nice!

Spinach Looking More Like the Real Thing

We last posted a picture of our young Spinach nearly a month ago on St Patrick's Day. Then each seedling just had the 2 thin grass-like leaves (called Cotyledon fyi) which you often find in bags of Spinach and feel a bit cheated. 

Now the proper round leaves are out and growing noticeably bigger each day. They're tasty too, we've eaten a few as they tend to damage easily.

Snowflake Ohanami for Damo

It's a shame that we are missing the Cherry Blossom season in Japan but our Snowflake plant has had a bit of a resurgence and and given Damo the Gnome his own Ohanami (flower viewing) variation. Looks like he's polished off the Sake already too.

The Spinach, Pepper and Tomato plants are all growing well and we've already popped some more peas into a tray for another pea shoot feast.

Pea Shoots Harvest

We'll be eating these Pea Shoots today - only 2 weeks after sowing!

Really fast and easy, there's plenty more seeds in the pack too.

Not forgetting the always reliable Mustard Cress as well.

Padron Pepper

The Padron Pepper we're growing from seed is gradually taking shape. We will have to keep him in the sun as much as possible. There's still some old Basil growing in the mug and some new Basil in the Hovis tin.

Just eaten some delicious Purple Sprouting Broccoli which we got from the Farmers Market this morning. Reminded us that we did buy some seeds right back at the beginning, if we can find the space we really must sow some. 

Super Lambs Lettuce

The Lamb's Lettuce is making slow but steady progress under the watchful eye of our SuperLambanana !

Despite also being called Winter Salad it seems to love the sun and sulks whenever we take it off the wondowsill. It has a strange habit of closing its top leaves together when it goes to sleep at night.

This is how tiny it was nearly a month ago.

Crop Rotation System

We squeeze as many plant pots onto the windowsill as possible. They all have to have their fair share of the sunlight so we spend some time each day rotating plants between different parts of the desktop and window.

As mentioned earlier, the desk is in front of a large West-facing window with plenty of light but only some direct sunlight in late afternoon and evening. Some plants are happy out of direct sunlight but most really seem to benefit from a few hours of sunbathing whenever possible.

We've had to stick to pots that fit between the window and the secondary glazing. At the top of this picture you can see the Spinach, next is 1 Pea plant then a few Tomato plants which are now looking really strong.