Indoor Winter Gardening

Have any of you tried indoor winter gardening?

Indoor plants will not only improve your mood during the cold winter months, but if you plant and succeed at indoor vegetable gardening – wouldn’t that be nice?

 
The two big issues with winter and gardening are COLD and SUNLIGHT.

We can overcome the cold weather by gardening indoors.

We cannot completely compensate for the low angle of sunlight during the winter months (and fewer hours of daylight) however we can help a little in that department…

 

Indoor Winter Gardening
( Sunlight )

As you might expect, having good light is crucial to success for indoor gardening.

Plants that don’t have enough light will grow ‘leggy’ (long and spindly). When a plant is deficient of light, the photosynthesis process won’t work so well – the plants won’t have enough energy to grow well.

Look for areas in your home that receive direct sunlight through windows. Southern exposure is important because it will get the most hours of sunlight.

Even with southern exposure windows, the problem is that there still may not be enough sunlight to work with (depending on what you’re trying to grow).

 

Indoor Winter Gardening
( Grow Lights )

You can supplement the requirement for sunlight with grow lights. And today’s LED grow light technology vastly reduces the cost of electricity to run those lights compared with the grow lights of yesteryear.

TIP: The following three products will set you up:

LED Grow Light – Full Spectrum
Clamp Light with Reflector
24-hour timer

More: LED Grow Lights For Indoor Plants

 

Indoor Winter Gardening
Give it a try!

Start from seed, or, at the end of the normal growing season you might choose a particularly hardy plant and move indoors.

For example you could dig up the root-soil ball of a good looking tomato plant, bring it indoors placed in a cleaned pot (with drainage). Cut back the plant some to encourage root growth. Add soil and compost as needed to fill the pot about 3/4-full with room for watering.

You might do the same with peppers too.

Some veggie plants like cool temperatures anyway, like lettuces, collards, green onions, and peas.

Consider vegetables like bunching (green) onions, herbs, kale, and beans – which grow fairly fast.

 
Plant Maintenance

If the plants have insect infestations like white flies, aphids, or spider mites, you can wash-spray the leaves with a mixture of slightly soapy water.

More: Homemade Recipes For Garden Pests – Organic Insecticide

During the winter, it’s often quite dry inside the home, so you may want to mist the plants every day.

Use a soil moisture meter to determine when the plants need watering.

Professional Soil Moisture Meter Tester

 
Attempting to successfully garden indoors during the winter will be a challenge.

If any of you have tried indoor winter gardening (especially with vegetables), let us know about your experiences and tips!