Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
This event was on
Tuesday, June 04, 2024 at 2:00 pm Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.
Question:
For beginners, what are the best herbal spices to easily start off your indoor mini garden like on a window sill?
— Brian Robertson
Answer:
So this is great. Um, I've been experimenting with this for a while now and uh, there are a couple different things you can get for a big flavor. Uh, one of them um, I would recommend is trying to do some microgreens, which you can just grow on a little matte basically. And they come in little kits you can put in a window sill, which is great and you just cut off the greens as you want to. Um, I love, uh, microgreen radishes 'cause they have kind of a big flavor or arugula with a nice peppery taste to them. Um, but if you're looking for other herbs, basil is one of those wonderful ones that will work inside. Um, because it's a subtropical plant basically. So it survives really well in like 72, 75 degree areas, which is what most people's houses are kind of at. But it'll also do a little bit, um, you know, it'll do fine in in a house area, it just needs to be able to get the sun. The great thing about that is you can keep trimming it and if you trim it just right, it'll keep producing more and more. So if you trim it right before it, kind of lease offen one of these and they'll have a stem in there, you cut the stem off with the leaves above it and these two areas will start growing up to basically new plants off of those two stalks, which is great. So basil is definitely a great win for those as well. Now other herbs like say, um, you know, parsley and cilantro are great, but you do need to plant kind of a lot of them to be able to, uh, produce what you're looking for and what you'd use in the kitchen. So I'll usually use like a, you know, about 12 inch, uh, across, uh, pot and I'll put tons and tons in there and just let them all kind of grow and trim them off as I need them to. Um, but you do have to kind of keep an eye on them and some of them will die off, so you might need to replant, you know, halfway through the season if you need to. But, um, those are a couple good ones. If it's in, you know, if you're in the winter where it's, uh, you get a lot of dark cloud cover, you might wanna put a grow light above it, which, uh, depending on where you're at, if you have a light above your sink or something, you can also just turn that into a, you know, UV light to be able to get the, the light that the plant needs as well. So it'll light your space and also give nutrients to your plants as well. But, uh, basil is definitely one of the great ones to be able to start with. Um, you know, parsley, cilantro wonderful ones. The microgreens are great. Uh, it might be a little bit harder to do things like uh, rosemary, but I've seen it happen for a lot. I had a rosemary plant inside for the, the winter that didn't do so well, but that might've just been, you know, my fault on that, which is possible. But I think the best thing to do is just try to experiment with a couple things and see what works best in your climate, in your personal area and see what works. Um, you know, if you're doing it from seed, you're not gonna be wasting a lot of money.