Posts Tagged ‘in-home kitchen garden’
Your In-Home Kitchen Garden
Oregano peeks out from under the first significant snow of autumn. When growing things outdoors is no longer an option, it can be very satisfying to plant an in-home kitchen garden.
Snow fell heavy on my home kitchen garden last night. This morning, every vaguely horizontal surface held an inch or more of light powder. I’m glad I’d already put my garden to bed, and that I’d finished a few related projects. Just last weekend, I planted two pear trees, a sour cherry tree, and two pecan trees and documented step-by-step how to plant trees in a blog post titled New Pear Trees in my Small Kitchen Garden. Now I’m kind of depressed.
Depressed? That might be overstating things. But the passing of fresh produce season is a bummer. Sure, I’ll still be able to buy stuff flown in from Peru, California, and other warmer regions, but none will compare to the produce that grows during spring, summer, and early autumn within a few miles of my house in Central Pennsylvania.
What’s a Home Kitchen Gardener to do?
So, I’m turning my attention inside. Depending on your determination and on the space you have available, you too can get gardening inside this winter. To provide encouragement, I’ve dug up some videos that show how one gardening enthusiast used her sun room in the off season to keep the produce going. I’ve included the first two in a series of five videos she produced on the project.
Please appreciate that this woman is very ambitious with her gardening. You don’t need to commit an entire room to your own in-home kitchen garden. What’s more, fancy storage containers, label makers, and other dedicated indoor gardening supplies aren’t necessary to succeed with winter produce.
On the other hand, for most of us, it’s impossible to over-emphasize two fundamental challenges of growing produce while the snow alls:
1. Winter sunlight may not be enough to feed vegetable and fruit plants
2. Many vegetables and fruits grow best in relatively hot weather
Lighting an in-Home Kitchen Garden
Will you need supplemental lighting to grow vegetables in the winter? Even if you have south-facing windows (for those in the northern hemisphere), your vegetable plants may not draw enough energy from the winter sun to plump up tomatoes, peas, beans, or whatever other items you grow. Generally, garden plants thrive when they get six hours of full sunlight each day.
South-facing windows in my basement have an extra-wide sill which is perfect for flower pots. However, the basement is cool, and winter sun isn’t bright enough for plants to produce lots of sugar and starch; I couldn’t grow beans and tomatoes here without supplemental lighting and heat.
Winter sunlight is weaker than summer sunlight. Only plants centered in unobstructed south-facing windows will get the dose they crave. If you add full-spectrum fluorescent lighting, and turn it on from mid-morning to late afternoon, you’ll have much better results than if you rely solely on natural sunlight.
Heat an in-Home Kitchen Garden
Plant biology slows down as the temperature drops. Some plants simply won’t sprout if the soil isn’t warm enough, and having sprouted, they grow very slowly unless the air is warm. Plants growing indoors in the winter may face two temperature challenges: First, we’ve all become very conservation-oriented, so we keep our living spaces in the sixties (Fahrenheit). Second, when we set up a home kitchen garden in front of windows, we expose them to the least cold-proof places in our homes; it might be ten to twenty degrees colder near a window than it is three or four feet away from the window.
You Know the Challenges…
To succeed with an indoor produce garden, provide adequate supplemental lighting and at least some localized heat near your plants. This may mean keeping a single room warmer than the rest of your home, or placing a space heater or several incandescent lights near your in-home kitchen garden.
The first video is three minutes, 20 seconds long. The second video is two minutes 41 seconds. Please enjoy them!
Here are links to other articles about growing vegetables indoors:
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Fun with Children and Indoor Container Gardening (Container … – Great ideas for container gardening • Growing an avocado tree from seed (C. DE MAIRE) • Inverted indoor gardening (OhCripes) • Japanese Maples for Containers (Dave’s Garden) • Starting a DIY Vertical Garden (Google / Gardening Tips ‘n’ …
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Indoor Gardening Tools – Enjoy Your Gardening Experience With The … – Abhishek Agarwal asked: The purpose of this article is to assess the need for various indoor gardening tools. Tools for indoor gardening are intended for.
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How to Grow a Garden » Blog Archive » Vegetable Gardening – To … – Providing adequate sunshine to your indoor vegetable garden without scorching the plants can be problematic, particularly if the windows in your home are not southerly facing. If you are fortunate to have south-facing windows but cannot …
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Hone your Green Thumb with Indoor Vegetable Gardening – You also don’t have the problem with garden pests with your indoor vegetable garden, since you are able to control the environment of your plants much more effectively. Finally, an indoor vegetable garden can dress up a south-facing …
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Indoor Container Vegetable Gardening Ideas | Cool Gardening Ideas – Indoor container vegetable gardening might not be quite the same as growing the same plants outdoors, but it can be fun to tend an indoor vegetable garden when the snows are blowing and the winds are roaring outdoors! …
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Grow Lights to Co2 Grow Rooms made Simple! » Imagine Creating Your … – There is a way around this and it’s just a perfect idea for the health conscious person… an indoor vegetable garden will satisfy that desire for pure, clean, unadulterated, fresh tasting salad or steamed veggies. …