The benefits of cultivating home-grown fruits and vegetables are seemingly endless. With enough practice and a little trial and error, you can enjoy outstandingly fresh, home-grown goodness all year round by planting seasonal crops. That said, being confined to seasonal produce can be limiting, particularly during the colder months. If you want a steady supply of warm-climate crops, even as temperatures plummet, it may be worth moving your veggies indoors.
Growing a healthy variety of indoor vegetables may be more accessible and straightforward than you’d initially considered. With help from LED grow lamps and humidity controllers, you can successfully cultivate delicious vegetables in any room of your home. Consider this beginner’s guide to getting started.
What Can You Grow?
The variety of crops you can easily cultivate indoors may surprise you. Here are just a few of the options:
Microgreens – Flavour-packed and bursting with nutrients, microgreens are fantastic beginner-friendly windowsill plants. Fill a shallow container with organic potting mix and sprinkle your seeds directly on top. Cover with a clear lid and leave your microgreens to work their magic.
Salad Greens – You can grow salad greens much in the same way as microgreens. Place your container on a sunny windowsill with organic potting mix and evenly scatter your mixed salad seeds. Your seedlings should start to appear in around 10-14 days.
Herbs – The beauty of growing herbs at home is you will never again need to purchase a packet of short-lived supermarket parsley, dill or chives. Most herbs are exceptionally easy to grow and require minimal maintenance.
Chillies – A small selection of vibrant chilli plants always brighten up a kitchen windowsill. If you can handle the heat, opt for fiery Zimbabwe Bird peppers. Alternatively, you could go for a milder banana pepper plant. Both varieties thrive in sunny environments, requiring eight hours of sunlight daily.
Veg Scraps – Practice zero-waste cooking by regrowing your veg scraps. By partially submerging the root ends in water, you can regrow spring onions, celery, bok choy and much more.
Window Boxes
As mentioned, a windowsill is a fantastic starting point for cultivating indoor vegetables. However, you could take things a step further by installing an outdoor window box. Granted, window boxes technically don’t class as an indoor gardening method; however, they are excellent for gardeners with limited space. Suppose you live in a high-rise apartment or any property without a garden. In that case, a window box will enable you to grow vegetables such as carrots, radishes, leafy greens and tomatoes from the comfort of your kitchen window.
Vertical Kitchen Gardens
Another excellent way to use every inch of space available is to create a vertical kitchen garden. Choose a sunny spot in your kitchen to install a wall-mounted vertical planter. You can purchase these handy pieces of gardening kit online or from your local gardening centre; ideal for staple cooking ingredients, like herbs, garlic and spring onions.
Ideal Containers
While you can recycle almost any household item as a plant pot – tin cans, egg boxes, old colanders – certain plants have specific requirements. Varieties that lend themselves well to container cultivation include carrots, radishes, beetroot and salad turnips. Choose containers with drainage holes, large enough to allow for root growth and protect your surfaces and floors from water damage with plant pot saucers.
In terms of potting mix, vegetables generally thrive in a well-balanced potting mix – two parts peat moss for one part vermiculite or perlite. Vermiculite traps nutrients and moisture making it ideal for water-loving veg varieties. Perlite keeps the soil loose and aids aeration and is often used when cultivating veg hydroponically.
Grow Tents
Grow tents, sometimes referred to as “grow rooms”, are closed climate-controlled frames that enable you to grow a variety of plants indoors by tailoring conditions down to the finest details. With the use of LED grow lamps and humidity controllers, you can replicate the native habitats of veg from all over the world so you can enjoy year-round fresh produce. Either purchase a grow tent kit from a reputable retailer comprising everything you need to get started or customise your own advanced grow tent system with state-of-the-art accessories. With the addition of a grow room, you can provide your crops with a better growing environment than they would have outdoors, with CO2-rich air and minimal risk of pests.
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