Designing Beautiful Edible Window Boxes

There is no reason why a windowsill garden cannot be beautiful as well as edible! While your main purpose is to grow food at home for yourself and your family, your indoors gardening efforts can also be aesthetically pleasing. If friends and neighbours are dubious about your efforts to grow your own, designing beautiful, edible window boxes could be the perfect way to win them all over. To help you in your efforts, here are some tips on beautiful edibles that you can grow beneath all your windows at home:

​Mixed Salads
 
The large array of lettuces, Asian greens and other leafy greens for salads means that they can bring a lot of visual interest to your window boxes. These easy to grow plants can be ready to harvest for your salads in as few as four to six weeks and since they are cut-and-come-again, you can enjoy the display over a long period, without harvesting leading to bare patches in your display. Once lettuce and other salad crops bolt, they can still be attractive – often with a profusion of pretty little yellow flowers. You can leave some of these for visual interest, and also as a boon for passing bees. You might even be able to start collecting some of your own seeds for the following year's planting.

​Edible Flowers
 
Mixed salads can be inter-planted in your window boxes with edible flowers such as nasturtiums, pansies, violas and many more. These bright and attractive flowers will brighten up your windowsill and your summer salads. Nasturtiums also provide edible seed pods which can be used in the same way as capers, and will trail down the side of a building over the edges of your display.

Other Attractive Edibles
 
There are plenty of other attractive edibles that are ideally suited to growing in a window box or a similar container. Dwarf peas can be allowed to trail over the edges, first providing interest in the form of the pretty white flowers, before creating their pods. Trailing tomatoes can also look extremely attractive. Strawberries too can be a great addition, with their pretty flowers preceding their vibrant fruits. Amongst leafy vegetables, chard comes in all different shades, and can be very pretty, as well as being a versatile and useful ingredient in a wide range of recipes.
 
Once you begin growing your own food at home, you will realise that there is a wealth of options for those who want to create a beautiful, edible garden. Your window boxes can be both practical