Ideally, before rushing to the store for seeds, it would be useful to read specialized literature on growing garden plants indoors. Unfortunately, I only skimmed a few articles on this topic when I got excited about the idea of a windowsill garden. As a result, I made a lot of mistakes that will likely affect the yield. But we learn from our mistakes, and I hope my errors will help other aspiring windowsill gardeners.
I started not with books but with seeds. Here are the ones I got: dill Salute, dill Ambrosia, tarragon (also known as estragon), chives (also known as Resanets onion or Scallion), and lemon balm.
In addition to these seeds, I had some century-old dill and parsley seeds in damp matchboxes from my grandfather.
Following the recommendations on the seed packets seemed too simple, and I don’t look for easy ways :) My grandfather (a gardener and winemaker with 50 years of experience) always soaks seeds before planting. So that’s what I did:
For a mini-greenhouse, I used an ice cube tray, cotton, and a bandage. We had about 50 million tons of snow in three days, and I filled a bucket to stock up on meltwater for the seeds. The cotton was almost floating in warm water. I placed a piece of bandage on the cotton, put a few seeds on the bandage, sprayed the seeds with water, and covered the tray with plastic wrap.
I placed the mini-greenhouse on a warm radiator, using a thick rolled-up towel between them (at my own risk). I also had another ice cube tray and sprouted garlic… Here’s what came out of it:
I carefully trimmed the dry tip from the garlic cloves to make it easier for the sprout to emerge. I left everything undisturbed overnight.
