One of my wintertime guilty pleasures is watching cooking shows on the idiot box. It’s not the best plan for dieters, but if you love to cook, it’s a great place to get inspired and to update your menus. One of my favourites is celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He’s never short of fresh herbs that he simply grabs from his window garden. Who does that? Well, actually anyone can. It only takes a bit of time to plan, a few materials, plus a dash of TLC.
What you’ll need: containers with drainage holes, planting media, seeds or plants, and a suitable location.
Plant each herb variety in their own pot. Otherwise, aggressive plants may choke out slower-growing varieties. Pots can be all the same for uniformity, or different to create an eclectic look. Unglazed terracotta will dry out faster than glazed or plastic pots. Regardless, use approximately the same size (3 – 4 inch / 8 – 12 cm diameter) container for ease of maintenance and aesthetics.
Choose a soil-less or peat-based, sterile potting media to avoid introducing insects or soil-borne diseases. Moisten the media before filling your pots to within a half inch of the rim. If you’re starting from seed, scatter a few seeds on the surface and cover with a thin layer of media. Cover with plastic wrap to keep the soil surface moist, but remove the cover as soon as seedlings begin poking through. After that, water as required to keep the media moist but not wet. Feed your plants on alternate weeks with a half-strength complete fertilizer solution (e.g. 20-20-20 + micronutrients).
Many herbs prefer Mediterranean-like conditions – bright light, shirt-sleeve temperatures (never cold, frosty or toasty) and good humidity. A south exposure is ideal, but as long as your garden gets 3 – 4 hours of sun a day, a west or east exposure will be fine. Glass is a poor insulator, so on the coldest days, plants next to the glass can be damaged from low to freezing temperatures. Therefore, keep leaves at least a couple of inches away from the glass. And never trap plants between the window and the curtains.
To keep your sill clean and to make watering easier, put all your pots in a large tray rather than individual saucers. You can add water to the tray, allowing pots to draw up water through their drainage holes. But you’ll need to be able to drain excess water so plants don’t sit in water for longer than an hour. To increase humidity around the plants, add a layer of gravel and keep the water level just below the top of the gravel.
Seeds at this time of year may be difficult to find in stores. But it’s worthwhile stopping at your favourite garden centre or farm supply. Mail-order and internet-shopping are your other options. You can’t beat Richter’s Herbs (www.richters.com) for variety. But there are many other Canadian seed suppliers (Stokes: www.stokes.com; Johnny’s Selected Seeds: www.johnnyseeds.com; and Veseys: www.veseys.com; William Dam Seeds: www.damseeds.com, to name a few). Many grocery stores now have fresh herbs in a cooler near the vegetable aisle. These you can treat as cuttings and simply root in a glass of water. Once they have roots an inch or two long (2-5 cm), transfer to one of your prepared pots.
Fungus gnats are one of the main pests of indoor gardening. They spend most of their life cycle in the soil as tiny white worm-like maggots, emerging as tiny flies to mate and lay eggs on the soil surface. As long as their main food source, decaying plant matter, is available, they cause little damage. But as maggot numbers increase, they start munching on live roots, reducing plant vigour and growth. The little flies themselves are mostly just annoying. Remember that you’ll eventually end up using these plants in your cooking, so avoid using pesticides. However, watering with a dilute hydrogen peroxide solution (1 part peroxide to 4 parts water) is a relatively benign but effective control option.
Erl gardens in Saskatoon
This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (SPS; saskperennial@hotmail.com). Check our website (www.saskperennial.ca) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/saskperennial) for a list of upcoming gardening events.
