Since moving into The Flower Bungalow, we have tried growing herbs in a few different places outside. We had some success with our first batch of nursery transplants in the garden we started last November. We had a good go for a few months with some dill, parsley, basil, oregano and rosemary.
During that time I shared recipes such as this garden-fresh ranch and herby chicken salad — herbs were abundant and plenty. Sadly, most of them went to flower or shriveled up and died in the scorching heat.
In my opinion, there’s nothing better than having fresh herbs on hand. I love just walking by and smelling them and plucking their little leaves for a home-cooked meal. They are a great addition to cocktails too!
In the last few months, I have been regularly creating new basil plants from store-bought clippings in repurposed glass bottles. The clippings root within two weeks and honestly seem to thrive in just the water. Despite this, I’ve moved them to pots and a raised garden bed on the patio. While they seem to do ok so long as I give them plenty of water, I’ve had other issues with pests and the heat.
Now that I have gotten used to having a fresh supply of herbs, we need them around out of necessity. I’m pretty tired of buying them from the store, so it’s time to do something about that.
Growing herbs on our kitchen windowswill
Surprisingly, we get amazing light in our north-facing kitchen window (usually the last place you want to put a plant) so I got my measuring tape out and immediately hopped on Etsy. I wanted the garden box I chose to extend the length of the windowsill and the wood to match our home’s redwood ceilings.
I landed on an Etsy shop called Kind Designs LLC, they custom-make wood products to order. I did end up purchasing two garden boxes that extend almost the whole sill. I figured it’d be easier to manage the boxes when I need to remove them if I had two versus one big long box. Within three weeks I had my garden boxes in hand and was ready to prep them for the indoor garden!
Before I go into how I did all of that, I want to test it out for a bit so I can report on how things are going. The general plan to start this indoor garden was to fill one garden with transplants while I started the other from seed.
Herbs in our indoor windowsill garden
In the first garden box, I transplanted:
- Lemon thyme
- Rosemary
- Basil
- Garden sage
- Greek oregano
In the second garden box, I’m starting from seed:
- Parsley
- Chives
- Cilantro
- Dill
- Lemon balm
So do you think I’ll have any luck with this indoor garden thing? I hope so! I will share more about how this is going and how I prepped the garden boxes in a future post! Be sure to follow me on Instagram for more daily content.
