We've gotten a lot of use out them so far, from tossing in handfuls of cilantro while cooking just about anything to using basil leaves in a variety of sauces and even whole for our basil pesto pizzas.
Before we could plant anything however, we needed some shelving to go next to the window that actually gets sun. We didn't really want to spend any money though, so we got creative! We started with this pile of random boxes and junk:
We have two larger boxes that would be the perfect height for the window, but of course a box isn't very sturdy, so we had to reinforce it. Here we've put two wooden dowels into a styrofoam brace to prop up the top of the box. The dowels were then nailed in from the top side.
Next we needed to fill in the box for further support, which involved playing a live action version of Tetris, trying to get everything to fit in properly and provide support...
Soon we had our boxes completely filled in and reinforced, and then taped shut. They are almost ready here:
They were kind of ugly though, so we decided to completely paint them over with white paint we had on hand. We're still planning on painting designs or perhaps gluing some of our perler bead art projects to them... someday. The plan is to have a spring design on one side and a fall/Halloween on the other, so we can just turn the boxes around every few months.
Finally we could get on to actually planting! We began with a pre-potted strawberry plant, along with a variety of herbs starting from seeds. We're just using cheap potting soil from Walmart along with 97 cent pots and some other containers we already had lying around.
After about the first week here's what our little garden started out as:
More than a month in our plants had positively exploded, with several of them needing to be re-potted to make room. Unfortunately we lost some of them on the first attempt, as our parsley didn't make the transition from the transfer shock.
We did get one big nice strawberry before the plant finally got sickly and eventually died, but most of the rest continued to thrive.
Here we've also got some watercress! Interestingly enough, we didn't do this from seed or as a pre-potted plant, but rather we got one of those living watercress varieties from the grocery store that still has the roots attached. After using most of it, we simply potted the remainder, and amazingly they continued to grow!
We've now been able to routinely cut off a portion to use for our watercress and Gorgonzola pasta.
Although we've only gotten a few peppers to actually sprout, they are going strong and are finally turning shade from green to red, which means we can use them soon. These have taken the longest to come to harvest, having been growing from seed for about three and a half months now.
The most prolific plant is ahead of the rest by a mile - our mint grows faster than we can use it! Several sprigs were needed for our honey-mint chicken, I've been using it to flavor water, and pulling sprigs by the handful to make homemade iced tea.
We'll check back in with a new update as summer turns to fall with all we've learned getting different plants to grow indoors in the Montana climate.
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