Windowsill Gardens

You need a few sunny windowsills or supplemental lighting to grow vegetables, which require at least six hours of direct sun daily. Plant dwarf or patio varieties of vegetables in pots, window boxes, or improvised containers. Hanging baskets make suitable homes for tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes. Train pole beans up tepees or trellises that you make with bamboo poles, or string monofilament from a windowsill planter to the top of the window frame and guide the stems into a living curtain.

Make decorative arrangements by combining different crops in one container. Plant red- and green-leaf lettuce together, for example, or edge a container holding a patio tomato with leaf lettuce and radishes.

Fertilize vegetables every two weeks. Water to keep the soil evenly moist, especially when plants begin to flower and produce fruit. Help fruit production by lightly brushing plants with your hand to spread pollen as they bloom.

Indoor vegetables often have less flavor than those you grow outdoors, but they definitely have more than most of what you buy at the store.

These vegetables can be grown inside:
Bush beans, bush tomatoes, carrots, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, loose-leaf lettuce, patio tomatoes, peas, pole beans, radishes, scallions, and spinach.

This decorative planting looks as good on a mantel or side table as it does on a windowsill. Change the accessories to suit a particular holiday or season. Make it easy to change the plantings by leaving plants in their nursery pots instead of planting them in soil when placing them in the window box. Use clumps of moss to camouflage the pot rims. If desired, move the planter outdoors to continue growing through summer. Set it in light shade and keep it watered.

Light: Medium-High Time: 1-2 hours Skill: Easy

• Cedar window box -- 26 inches long x 6 inches wide x 6 inches deep
• All-purpose potting soil
• Soil scoop
• Houseplants, herbs
• Green moss or sphagnum peat moss
• Decorative accents if desired

Plants We Used: geranium, oregano, peperomia, begonia, blue ginger