Windowsill Winter Salad

[growingthings]

I'm a bit partial to some salad leaf with me dinner every once in a while, but resent paying £1+ for a bag of it during the winter months. So basically I was wondering if any of you had had any success in growing winter salads indoors and if so what varieties - I don't need much as I am the only 'lettuce eater' in the family. The OH only eats it to set a good example to the Tallest (you can see him inwardly wincing with every chew! heheheh )

Thankyou

Lorna x

[Odsox]

Can't help with lettucy things, although I dogrow winter lettuce very successfully in a polytunnel, but I do grow tomatoes all winter on a sunny windowsill.
The variety is called Microtom and they produce cherry sized toms. Last year I grew a couple in pots, but this year I have started earlier and are growing them in a small trough.

Tomatoes.jpg (106.89 KiB) Viewed 1821 times

These were photographed last March from a January sowing.

[jim]

Dear Odsox,

Without leading you into the temptation of adverising .... do you have a seed catalogue name for microtoms? I've Googled it but the nearest I've found is Oregon, slightly more than cycling distance,

Love and Peace
Jim

[Odsox]

Dear Odsox,

Without leading you into the temptation of adverising .... do you have a seed catalogue name for microtoms? I've Googled it but the nearest I've found is Oregon, slightly more than cycling distance,

Love and Peace
Jim

I got mine from this site ... http://www.nickys-nursery.co.uk/seeds/pages/veg5aa.htm
Not connected with them in any way

[carolinej]

Whenever I grow things on the windowsill, they seem to get leggy. I would like to try lettuce this year though.

Let me know how you get on, and we can compare our mini crops

The tomatoes look great.

cj

[Green Aura]

You can get "cut and come again" salad leaves. There's salad bowl mixed and Thompson & Morgan do a continental and a spicy blend. Plant 'em and pick 'em. I'm sure others wil have their own mixes as well but I've tried these and they're really easy to grow.

The other thing you could do is sprout seeds, they're really tasty, add a bit of crunch and almost endless in choice.

[Millymollymandy]

Can't help with lettucy things, although I dogrow winter lettuce very successfully in a polytunnel, but I do grow tomatoes all winter on a sunny windowsill.
The variety is called Microtom and they produce cherry sized toms. Last year I grew a couple in pots, but this year I have started earlier and are growing them in a small trough.

Tomatoes.jpg

These were photographed last March from a January sowing.

That's amazing to have fruit on a plant in only 2 months, and indoors! I want some.

[Odsox]

That's amazing to have fruit on a plant in only 2 months, and indoors! I want some.

Actually it was nearer 3 months, I sowed the seed for those two plants on the 2nd of January and took the photo on the 30th of March.
Still quite impressive though and I have been extolling it's virtues ever since.
Another of it's features is that even on a window sill it doesn't get even the tiniest bit leggy and doesn't really even lean towards the window.
On the negative side, the fruit is definitely tomato tasting but nothing spectacular ... but then what do supermarket tomatoes taste like in March ?

[Thomzo]

I been trying to do exactly this. I mixed up some salad-leaf seeds (mizuna, radish, beetroot etc) with some seeds for sprouting. They worked quite well but now have whitefly. I don't reallly know what to do. I have a fly-eating plant next to them for now to see if that helps.

Zoe