How to Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round

Grow Veggies, Herbs, Sprouts, and More

Kim Roman

• Editore: Creative Homeowner
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781637410523
• Argomento: Biological Sciences
• Categoria: Horticulture

No room to garden outside? No problem! A complete guide filled with a host of valuable information and DIY projects, Ultimate Guide to Indoor Gardening shares all the knowledge on how to grow a variety of foods inside your home. From growing vegetables, microgreens, and herbs to hydroponic gardening, troubleshooting, and more, learn to grow fresh produce all year-round, no matter where you live. With expert tips on composting, working with grow lights, choosing a growing locale, container gardening for both root and above ground vegetables, the basics of fermentation, and so much more, this must-have resource is a one-stop shop on everything you need to know about successful indoor food production and how to maximize your indoor space!

PART 1

GETTING STARTED

In this part of the book, we’ll discuss several great reasons you’ll want to garden indoors. If you read the Introduction and still haven’t figured out your why, this chapter will help.

We’ll also cover the important planning steps you’ll need to take before you even start your garden so you can work smarter, not harder. Ultimately you’ll save time, money, effort, and frustration.

Finally, we’ll strategize how to more evenly distribute the weight of your containers and prevent damage to your floors, walls, and table. This is a no-disaster zone!

Many of us have likely brought herbs indoors over the winter, but have you ever grown food crops? It’s time to start!

CHAPTER 1

Advantages to Gardening Indoors

The biggest advantage of indoor gardening is not having to deal with the weather.

One only needs to do a quick online search to come up with many reasons to grow food indoors. Let’s walk through a few of the most common ones here.

Better Weather

Most people complain about the cold, but frankly, the summer heat and humidity affect me even more, and I know many of you readers feel the same. Indoor gardening isn’t just for wintertime! With indoor gardening, not only can you save yourself the pain of facing the elements, but you can have a great deal of control over the “weather,” i.e., the temperature and light, in your indoor garden.

About the only downside of indoor gardening is that your body won’t be producing as much vitamin D as it would if you were outside in the garden absorbing the sunshine. So make sure you’re still getting enough safe sun exposure.

Local Eating

Another weather-related factor is the lack of availability of certain foods during the winter months at your local grocery store. Granted, nowadays you’re able to find almost anything you want in your local market at any time of the year, but at what cost to your pocketbook and the environment? Your winter tomato has traveled who knows how many thousands of miles to grace your dinner table. I’m an advocate of eating seasonally and purchasing locally, but growing indoors means that in many cases, with proper planning, you’ll be able to eat what you like at almost any time of the year.

Fewer Pest and Disease Problems

Indoor gardening doesn’t mean that you won’t have any problems, but there will be fewer kinds of bugs to contend with. For instance, moths won’t be hovering over your plants and laying eggs that will become hungry, hungry caterpillars to decimate brassicas like your cabbages and kale. Also, if you set up your indoor garden correctly, your plants shouldn’t experience as many disease problems.

Relatedly, while they don’t bother your plants, I don’t know about you, but I get eaten alive by mosquitos in the summer months. For me, that is the biggest deterrent to gardening at any time of the year, so I’m grateful not to have to battle them.

An advantage to growing indoors is not having to deal with pests like mosquitos.

You also won’t have to contend with deer, birds, squirrels and other critters stealing your harvest just as something yummy ripens. The benefits just keep rolling in!

Money Savings

You’ll save money by gardening indoors. . . eventually. Start-up costs will put a dent in your budget initially, but if you factor those costs over the life of the hydroponic kit or other growing apparatus, you’ll soon find that you’re saving money over what you’d pay at the grocery store or farmer’s market for fresh, organic produce. This is especially true if you learn how to start your own plants from seeds rather than buying transplants—see Chapter 12 for more about seed starting.

Food Safety

You’ll know exactly what’s in/on your food and can use organic methods if that’s important to you. For instance, did you know that the apples you buy in the grocery store might be as much as ten months old? Not only have they been sprayed with pesticides, but also with coating chemicals to extend their lifespan. Other produce is sprayed with fungicides. Even if the produce you buy has been pre-washed at one point in time, think of how many hands and machines have touched it since then. Was the machinery properly cleaned? Did the workers handle things in a safe manner? When unbagged produce is misted at the store to keep it fresh, do you know when the water hoses and emitters were last sanitized? Growing your own food means that you have complete control over the entire process.

Fun for the Kids

How many children really know and understand where food comes from? Indoor gardening is a great way to spend quality time with your children and grandchildren while integrating different school subjects and life lessons.

Children love the wonders of the garden, and you can teach them a lot while getting them involved.

Once, my then five-year-old grandson was asked to draw food in his pre-kindergarten class. He did nothing more than color the piece of paper brown. The teacher thought he hadn’t understood the assignment and said, “Reece, you’re supposed to draw food.” He said, “I did! I drew the soil in my Oma’s garden. There are seeds underneath that will make food.”

Adaptability and Accessibility

If you or a loved one is older or has a medical condition that makes it hard to venture outside, indoor gardening is a great way to keep active in comfortable, climate-controlled surroundings. You’ll be able to grow your crops at the right height without bending over or reaching up too high.

In fact, during the writing of this book, I experienced a health scare due to a side effect of a new medication. Extreme fatigue meant I wasn’t able to keep up with my outdoor garden. However, I was still able to produce a good amount of food in my indoor garden without physical exertion.

Empowerment

Finally, you’ll feel extremely strong by pushing the envelope. Nothing is more empowering than feeding your secret rebellious streak as well as your stomach by defying Mother Nature, especially during the winter months, by growing your own food.

The customizable aspect of indoor gardening will also allow you to tailor your work to your needs and give you a sense of personalization that will connect you even more with your work. While my garden teaching career has been based on small-space, high-intensive methods, which are presented in this book, you can scale these methods up or down based on your desires and your available space to create just the garden for you.

THE AIR QUALITY MYTH

Why didn’t I mention in this chapter that growing an indoor garden would improve the air quality in your home and provide additional oxygen? You’ve probably heard that plants purify the air of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and provide the room they’re in with fresh oxygen. I really hate to burst your bubble, but that’s just not true. In 2019, the Journal of Exposure Science Environmental Epidemiology debunked this myth when they analyzed twelve different studies on the subject spanning thirty years.

Modern ventilation systems mean we never have to worry about oxygen production and removal of VOCs in our indoor air. In order to make an appreciable difference in air quality, you would need at least ten plants for every square foot (0.03 square meter) of room space.

When plants were put into a chamber and VOCs were pumped in, something would happen, and the VOCs would, indeed, decay over time. The scientists assumed it was the plants, but it turned out to be the microbes in the soil that actually did the work. The review concluded that ventilation would remove VOCs much faster than plants or soil microbes ever could. Grow plants indoors for their beauty and the food they provide, but don’t rely on them to clean the air.

There are plenty of great reasons besides the air quality myth to grow plants indoors.

CHAPTER 2

Before You Start

No matter how you garden, always start small and expand over time.

Motivational speaker and self-development author Brian Tracy says it best: “Every minute you spend in planning saves ten minutes in execution; this gives you a one thousand percent Return on Energy!” I don’t know about his math skills, but I agree th...