Growing Herbs in Small Pots on a Windowsill

Why a Windowsill Is the Best Place to Start

There is something quietly satisfying about snipping a few leaves of mint into a mug of tea while the kettle is still boiling. A windowsill is the smallest, kindest patch of growing space you will ever own: it is close to the kitchen, easy to keep an eye on, and it asks nothing of you but a few minutes each week. The herbs that thrive there are the same ones we reach for most often — mint, basil, parsley and chives — and they are far happier in pots than most people expect.

The trick is to treat each pot as its own tiny environment. A south or west-facing sill that gets four to six hours of light a day is ideal for basil and chives. A slightly shadier spot suits mint and parsley, which can scorch or bolt in full midday sun behind glass. If your sill gets very hot in summer, move pots back a few centimetres from the glass, where the air still moves.

Choosing Pots and Compost

Buying supermarket herbs already in pots is fine, but they are usually crammed together in a seed tray, competing for water and light. Split them up within a day or two and pot them on individually and they will repay you for months.

• Basil: a 15–18cm pot, one plant per pot. Basil hates having its roots crowded.
• Mint: a 15cm pot, but always its own. Mint sends out runners and will strangle anything beside it. Sinking the pot into a larger one, or choosing a slightly smaller pot to restrict the roots, keeps it tidier.
• Parsley: a deeper pot, 18–20cm, because it grows a long taproot that resents being squashed.
• Chives: a 12–15cm pot works well; they grow in tight clumps and look handsome in a plain terracotta pot.

Use a peat-free multipurpose compost with a handful of horticultural grit or vermiculite mixed through for drainage. Every pot needs a drainage hole and a saucer underneath — water sitting around the roots is the single most common reason windowsill herbs give up.

Watering: Little and Often, but Not Always

The golden rule on a windowsill is to check before you water. Push a finger about 2cm into the compost. If it feels dry at that depth, water; if it is damp, wait until tomorrow. Lifting the pot is another good test — a light pot needs water, a heavy one does not.

Water in the morning where you can, letting the excess drain into the saucer, then empty the saucer after half an hour so the roots are never left standing. Basil and chives prefer to dry out slightly between waterings; mint and parsley like to stay just moist. In winter, when light levels drop and growth slows, cut watering right back — most windowsill herbs die in January from kindness, not neglect.

Feeding Without Overdoing It

Compost only holds enough nutrients for about six weeks. From April to September, give your herbs a weak liquid feed — seaweed-based is gentle and works well — every fortnight. Dilute it to about half the strength recommended on the bottle. Overfeeding produces soft, floppy growth with little flavour, and basil in particular will sulk.

Mint and chives need very little; one feed a month is plenty. Parsley is the hungriest of the four and appreciates a slightly stronger, more regular feed through the growing season. If leaves turn pale yellow between the veins, that is usually a sign of hunger rather than disease.

Harvesting So the Plant Keeps Giving

Regular picking is not a treat for the plant, it is a requirement. Cut often, and cut properly.

• Basil: pinch out the growing tip just above a pair of leaves. Two new shoots will appear from that point. Never take more than a third of the plant at once, and remove flower buds as soon as you see them.
• Mint: snip the top few centimetres of each stem, again above a leaf pair. Pinch off flowers to keep the leaves sweet and the plant producing.
• Parsley: cut the outer stems right down at the base, leaving the younger centre to carry on. Treat it as a cut-and-come-again crop.
• Chives: snip with scissors about 5cm from the compost, taking whole stems rather than trimming the tops. They regrow within a fortnight in warm weather.

Everyday Troubles and Small Adjustments

If your basil is tall and thin with few leaves, it is stretching towards the light. Turn the pot a quarter-turn every few days and pinch the tips more often. Pale, weak growth in winter is simply a lack of light, and no amount of feeding will fix it.

Small flies around the compost usually mean the soil is staying too wet; let the surface dry out and water from below for a while. Aphids can be wiped off with your fingers or a gentle jet of water from a spray bottle. A weekly check of the undersides of leaves catches most problems early, before they spread to the rest of the sill.

Rotate your pots, keep the saucers empty, and taste as you go. A windowsill of four small pots will give you more than enough for a sprig of mint in a jug of water, a handful of basil over tomatoes, and a scatter of chives across a baked potato — which is, in the end, exactly what a kitchen garden is for.