Welcome to Modern Agriculture!
For those of you who don’t have a garden, don’t worry! In order to grow these plants, all you need is a window sill and some readily available bits from around the house or online. Here are ten plants you can grow indoors to bring cheer to adults and children alike at very little cost.
Rinse the seed of an avocado under the tap and then, using toothpicks, suspend it over a glass of water so that the flat bottom is just touching the water. The seed will germinate within 4 weeks and you will have your very own avocado tree.
These are easily available online (even now!). You’ll need to soak the seed in a jar with a few small holes in its lid and rinse them each day until they sprout. These sprouts make a great addition to your diet and will provide fresh greens without the need to leave the house. They take three to four days to appear and you can find comprehensive growing instructions here.
Plants such as Ficus elastica and spider plants will root easily in a glass filled with fresh water. This will cheaply increase your stock of house plants. You could even give a few living presents to friends and loved ones. Discover how to take cuttings in six easy steps.
Twist off the top of a pineapple to remove the first few sets of leaves, leaving a bare patch of about 1–2cm on the bottom of the top area. Place this into in a pot of compost, where it will root and grow.
Clean off date pips after eating and soak them in water for 24hrs. Then, place them in a sandwich bag with some damp kitchen towel and keep them in a warm, dark spot to germinate. This can take between 1–4 weeks. Germinated seed can be potted up to give your very own baby date palm.
If you are lucky enough to have a dragon fruit in the fridge, you could pick out its black seeds and place them on a damp paper towel in a warm spot with plenty of light. They will then sprout and last a few weeks without the need for potting up.
Sow 3 lettuce seeds to a pot and leave them on the window sill. Once the seedlings have germinated, pick out the two weaker ones and grow the third on. The best part is you get around 100 seeds per pack of lettuce seeds, meaning you’ll have a generous supply!
Sow pea seeds in pots of compost and wait for them to germinate. Once they reach 10cm tall, trim them back to the first or second leaf for a crop of delicious pea shoots. They make a great addition to salad and will crop multiple times, meaning you’ll get 3 or 4 crops from them before having to repeat the growing process.
They take as little as little as two weeks and you’ll have some fresh salad by the end of it. Find out more here.
Simply remove all the basil leaves from a stem of basil and cut the stem just under a node (these occur under each leaf). Place the cutting in a glass water and position in a bright spot on the window sill. Once it roots, you can pot it up in compost and grow your own basil plant.
To find out more about John’s garden at Fairlight Hall, visit fairlighthall.co.uk.
