Small Garden Projects You Can Do on a Windowsill

The first plant I ever kept alive was a single pot of mint on a kitchen windowsill in a third-floor apartment in 2014. It was about twelve centimetres tall, I had bought it from a Bunnings on a Saturday morning while hung over for four dollars, and I had killed every plant I had previously been gifted up to that point. The mint, against all available evidence, lived for two years.

By the time it eventually died I had eight other plants alongside it. By the time I had a proper garden I had killed maybe forty plants in total, and now, ten years later, I grow most of my own herbs and half my vegetables, and I have strong opinions about compost. Which is to say: you can start from absolutely nothing.

Most garden advice on the internet assumes you have a garden, which is a bit like a swimming lesson that assumes you have a pool. This piece is for the rest of us. Renters, balconies only, no light in the kitchen, killed-the-last-three-plants. Here are five small projects you can actually do this weekend.

1. The herb-on-the-windowsill starter pot

You will need a small pot (about ten centimetres wide, with drainage at the bottom), a handful of potting mix, a herb seedling from any nursery or supermarket (basil, mint, parsley or chives are the easiest), and a windowsill that gets a few hours of direct sun a day.

What to do: half-fill the pot with dirt, tip the seedling in, settle it, fill around the sides with more dirt. Press down gently with your fingers. Water until water runs out the bottom of the pot. Put it on the windowsill. Water again when the top of the dirt feels dry to the touch, which is usually every two to four days depending on how warm your kitchen is.

That is the whole project. Pick a sprig when you cook, and the plant grows back. You will feel like a small god of a very small kingdom. One note though: basil is the diva of the herb world and dies if you look at it sideways. Mint is the cockroach. Start with mint if you have killed things before.

2. Pothos from a cutting

A pothos (devil's ivy) is the world's most forgiving houseplant. If you do not already have one, find a friend who does and ask for a cutting. About fifteen centimetres long, with at least three leaves.

Put the cut end into a glass of water on a windowsill. The water needs to cover the little bumps on the stem just below the leaves, because those are the bits that grow roots. In two or three weeks you will see real white hairy roots growing in the water, and in six to eight weeks there will be enough of them to plant the cutting into a pot of dirt. You have made a plant out of nothing. Repeat as many times as you like, give them to friends, build a small kingdom of pothos plants on every available surface.

3. Lettuce in a shoebox

If you have a sunny windowsill that gets four hours or more of direct light, you can grow your own salad. You will need a shallow plastic shoebox or a seed tray with drainage holes punched in the bottom, some seed-starting mix, and a packet of lettuce seeds (mixed leaves work well).

Scatter the seeds, cover them with about a centimetre of mix, water them gently with a spray bottle so you do not wash the seeds away. They will sprout in seven to ten days. Harvest the outer leaves when they reach about eight or ten centimetres tall, and the plants keep growing from the centre. You will have salad for the kitchen, for free, more or less forever in eight-week stretches.

4. Microgreens

A two-week project that ends with you genuinely impressing yourself. You will need a shallow tray (an old takeaway container works fine), a few centimetres of seed-starting mix, and a packet of microgreen seeds. Radish, mustard or broccoli are all good for beginners.

Scatter the seeds thickly. You want a carpet of them, not individual plants. Cover lightly with a thin layer of mix, mist with a spray bottle once a day, keep in indirect light. In four or five days you will see tiny green leaves come up. In ten to fourteen days they are ready to harvest with kitchen scissors. Sprinkle them on everything for the next week. Eggs, soups, salads, sandwiches. The supermarket sells the same thing for eight dollars a punnet and you have just grown yours for about thirty cents.

5. The "one tomato plant in a pot" experiment

Spring and summer project, game-changing if you have ever eaten a supermarket tomato in February and wondered why it tastes of cardboard. You need a sunny balcony or a sunny windowsill, a big pot (at least twenty-five centimetres wide), and one single tomato seedling.

Plant the seedling deep into the pot, burying the stem up to the lowest set of leaves. Tomatoes grow extra roots from a buried stem, which makes the plant stronger overall. Stake it loosely with a bamboo stick and some twine. Water deeply but infrequently (twice a week, plenty each time, rather than a small amount every day).

By February you will be eating fresh tomatoes off the vine. One plant gives you between thirty and fifty tomatoes over a season, and the first one you pick warm off the vine and eat with salt on the back doorstep will ruin supermarket tomatoes for you forever.

What I want you to take from this

You do not need a backyard. You do not need green thumbs (those are made, not born). You do not need a four-hundred-dollar ceramic pot from a design shop. You need a sunny spot however small, a cheap container with drainage in the bottom, the patience to wait two weeks for nothing to appear to be happening, and the grace to let some of the plants die without taking it personally.

Things will die. That is part of it. The first six plants I bought all died, and now there is a garden. The mint that survived in 2014 is still the proudest plant I have ever grown, twelve centimetres of it from a Bunnings on a hungover Saturday.

The Offline Box ships one small garden project a month. Seeds for the season, a project card, exactly what you need to get something growing on your windowsill. Founding fifty for June, a handful left.

With love, Sam