A Kitchen Garden for the Price of a Few Seed Packets

The first thing most new growers do is spend money they do not need to spend. Trays, propagators, heated mats, special pots, a shelf of bottles and feeds — you can easily part with fifty pounds before a single seed has germinated. Yet some of the most productive, satisfying growing happens on a kitchen windowsill, in a yoghurt pot, from a packet of seed that cost less than two pounds.

If you can offer a plant reasonable light, decent compost, water and a little attention, it will reward you. Everything else is a luxury, not a requirement.

Put Your Money Into Compost and Seed

This is where thrift and stinginess part company. Old containers are fine; tired compost is not. Buy the best peat-free multipurpose compost you can afford, and buy seed from a reputable supplier rather than the dusty remnants of a bargain bin.

• Multipurpose compost suits almost everything in containers. If you are sowing fine seed, you can rub it through a kitchen sieve to make a finer layer for the top couple of centimetres.
• Never fill containers with garden soil. It compacts, drains poorly, and brings in weeds and pests. It is not a saving, it is a setback.
• Add grit or perlite to the mix for herbs such as thyme, rosemary and lavender, which resent soggy roots.
• One packet goes a long way. A packet of mixed salad leaves can give you dozens of cuttings over a whole season. Share seed with a neighbour and halve the cost again.

That is your entire essential shopping list: compost, seed, and something to water with. A small watering can or a clean plastic bottle with holes pierced in the lid will do.

Recycled Containers That Work Beautifully

Almost anything that holds compost and can be given drainage holes will grow something. Scour the recycling bin before you visit a garden centre.

• Mushroom and grape trays from the supermarket make superb seed trays. They are shallow, rigid and stack.
• Yoghurt pots, large tomato tins and plastic bottles cut in half are ideal for herbs and single lettuce plants.
• Old washing-up bowls, buckets and crates become generous salad planters. Line wooden crates with a folded compost bag to stop the mix drying out.
• Loo roll tubes and newspaper pots make free root trainers for anything that dislikes root disturbance.

The one rule is drainage. Warm a metal skewer and push three or four holes in the base of plastic pots, or use a bradawl on tins. Stand containers on old saucers, plates or a folded length of capillary matting to catch the water that runs through.

Find Your Brightest Spot

Light is the limiting factor indoors, and it is worth being honest about what you have. A south-facing windowsill giving six hours or more of direct sun will grow basil, tomatoes and salad with real enthusiasm. An east-facing sill is lovely in the morning and kind to leafy herbs. A north-facing windowsill is a struggle even in midsummer, so keep it for mint and chives, which are the most forgiving.

Turn pots a quarter turn every few days so plants do not lean permanently towards the glass, and keep foliage from pressing against cold panes on winter nights. A windowsill above a radiator is dry and warm — fine for basil, punishing for parsley.

What to Grow First

Start with things that are cut repeatedly rather than harvested once, because that is where the value lies.

• Cut-and-come-again salad: rocket, mizuna, land cress, mustard and loose-leaf lettuce. Sow thinly, then snip leaves about two centimetres above the compost when they reach 8–10cm. They regrow two or three times.
• Herbs: mint, chives, parsley, coriander and basil. Mint is thuggish in open ground but well behaved in a pot. Basil needs warmth — sow from late April onwards, not in February.
• Spring onions and radishes in a deep trough, if you have the space.

Sow a little and often. A small pinch of salad seed every fortnight from March to August gives you a continuous supply instead of a glut followed by nothing. Hardy leaves can move outside from April; tender crops such as basil should wait until the last frosts have passed, which in most of the UK means mid to late May.

Keeping It Going for Pennies

Water little and often, aiming at the compost rather than the leaves, and use rainwater from a butt or a bucket left out in the garden — it is free and plants prefer it to hard tap water. Feed hungry crops with a diluted homemade comfrey or nettle feed; a bucket of leaves left to steep for a fortnight smells dreadful but works wonders.

Watch for greenfly on indoor plants and deal with them early with a firm squirt of water. Damping off, which fells seedlings at compost level, is prevented by good airflow, clean containers and not overwatering. Slugs will find outdoor pots, so raise them onto a shelf or rim them with crushed eggshells and grit.

Above all, do not be disheartened by a failed sowing. Seeds are cheap, seasons keep coming round, and a handful of home-grown rocket snipped onto a plate of pasta on a wet Tuesday in March is one of the best-value pleasures a kitchen can offer.