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.

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. 

Our Young Basil Family

Today we would like to feature our Basil seedlings. As well as the common or Sweet Basil we have its distant cousin the Japanese Shiso or Perilla. 

They're all members of the Mint family - Lamiaceae

In Japan they used the Shiso variety with Spaghetti for many years before gradually switching to the more Mediterranean version. It's still used in traditional dishes, I like Shiso with Sushi, the leaves can grow quite big, they look like nettles!

Meanwhile the first batch of Cress has been devoured and more seeds sown.

Desktop Garden One Month Review

After nearly a month and over 20 blog posts since we started the Desktop Garden it may be worth a quick review of how it's going.

You can see that the desk is quite full, the Tomatoes and Pak Choi are looking quite strong on the windowsill though we sometimes bring them in if it's a very cold night.

We have added a wire shelf to raise up the plants at the back of the desk to get them out of the shade a bit more.

The Mint and Rosemary are thriving and regrow whenever we snip off a few leaves for the kitchen but the Thyme was not at all happy, not sure why, some plants just don't like being indoors. We're going to try growing some Thyme from seed. Only 1 of the Pea seeds has sprouted, that is going well but we fear that may be the only one from the pack to germinate.

The Peppers, Spinach and Japanese Basil are looking good too. The Rocket Salad seedlings are are looking quite weak but most have new leaves appearing from the centre. We're thinking that it may better to sow some seeds straight into the big pots or troughs and leave them rather than starting in modules and potting up. As we're not going to plant outside it may be better to avoid any unnecessary disturbance. 

One unforeseen problem we have discovered is that we can't go away! We have to check, water, talk to and move plants every day. We'll have to appoint some trustworthy green-fingered friend to look after things when we go on holiday.

It is also difficult keeping the room clean and tidy - compost and water gets everywhere. Need to be organised and disciplined - we are of course :)

Its been fun so far and we've already learnt a lot. We're happy with how it looks and have already been blessed with some lovely flowers and edible herbs. It's sad when things fail but but it's great to wake up in the morning to check for new arrivals pushing their little heads through the soil.

The Rocket Takes Off!

After only a couple of days the rocket seeds are already growing tall. Will need to pot up very soon.

As well as a few Tomato seeds we also planted some Japanese Basil (Shiso or Perilla) which we have grown successfully on a window sill in the past - looking forward to harvesting that in the Summer, it's delicious in Tempura :)

So the desktop is starting to fill up already. We realised we forgot to get labels to put in the pots, we need to get some soon before we lose track.