Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello chums. I was wonder what options I would have for growing veg in winter on a windowsill? (in the UK)

Are there tomatoes or peppers or anything which could survive or am I limited to cabbage?

Cheers!

I would assume that you could grow anything that you wanted to, providing that the temp and light sources were adequate. From my understanding, Tomatoes need anywhere from moderate to full sun with a temp of at least 60-90F. I guess that it depends on what direction your window is facing and how warm you can keep it in your house. Of course, all things are possible with grow lights and aquaponics..

South facing window that gets a lot of sun.. my concern is the temperature. Throughout winter temps will get down to 45 for a few hours a day. Though at these times, I can put a heater on my fish tank which would be right next to the plants. The heat from that might knock the room temp up to 50.

Would tomatoes / peppers etc be able to cope with a few hours of 50F per day? Or are there any cheap ways I could heat or insulate them?

I would think that they would be technically ok, but I would worry about whether or not they would actually thrive. I'm having problems with the tomatoes in my greenhouse, in that, they flower but they do not produce fruit. It's weird. In that case the only thing that I can think of would be the absence of wind or insects that would aid in pollination. But, back to your deal... If there is some way that you can keep the temp to around 55+ then I would think that they would be ok. A word on the peppers is that I believe they need a hot growing season in order to produce well. I'm sure that someone else here who knows way more than I do can chime in but those are my two cents and I'm afraid that they aren't worth much yet.

Temperature wise, they'll be fine, maybe grow a little slower, but light wise I doubt it.

Productive plants need a lot of light to grow well, and I haven't seen many window that give enough direct light for the plants to grow well. If you got something like a proper grow light above it, then it'd be a different matter. Four hours of direct light in the morning or afternoon won't cut it.

Balls. Well I guess there's only one way to find out! I'll have some backup veg planted just in case. Thanks for your responses.

Suppose I could get an LED growlight and set it to kick in for a couple of hours after the sun goes down in winter to give them a slight boost!

Perhaps hang a sheet of brilliant white material, like paper or perhaps even a projector screen, inside the room, so that light filtering through the plant leaves gets reflected onto the other side (the dark / shaded side) of the plants.