Indoor Vegetable Gardening made simple

Don’t despair when cold weather comes! While you may need to take a break from your outdoor vegetable garden, your indoor garden can now begin. You can grow all kinds of tasty root crops indoors. Additionally, you can plant a number of other vegetables like tomatoes and leafy greens.

One thing you need to remember is that growing vegetables inside is different from growing them outside. You have to be more careful with the pollination, temperature, and the amount of light that they receive. Indoor vegetable gardening requires you to pay more attention to your plant’s growing needs until they are well-established.

Root crops and leafy crops need cooler indoor temperatures. If at all possible, it’s ideal to place them in a bright room which isn’t used often and where the temperature in that room will not go below freezing. These kinds of plants can handle the cooler range of temperatures during daytime, normally 60 degrees, as well as night temperatures in the high 30s.

Crops such as tomatoes, hot and sweet varieties of peppers, beans and cucumbers, require warm temperatures all through the daytime and nighttime so they can grow well. The best daytime temperature is in the high 70s, and the night temperature must not go below 60.

It is best to conduct your indoor vegetable gardening in a room that is facing the south and has the ability to warm up during the winter time due to solar heating. It is still important for the plants to receive 6-8 hours of sunlight every day. In order to accomplish this you should keep your plants as close to the windows as you can. Unfortunately this can often cause the plants to freeze because of the coldness that is emanating from the windows. In order to avoid this problem try using supplemental heating for the room with the mix of warm-white and cool-white fluorescent lighting.

An indoor vegetable garden should be planted in a light weight soil mixture. Don’t use soil from your garden. There are many commercially available potting mixes which are suitable for growing vegetables indoor. A combination of equal parts perlite, peat, potting soil, and vermiculite, will produce an indoor soil that is light enough to prevent insects and diseases that can harm your crops.

You will need to water your indoor vegetable garden more frequently than your outdoor garden. Be careful not to over water either. Remember that indoor plants do not have the sources of humidity that outdoor plants do. This is due to the cooler temperatures and the fact that these plants are kept in an enclosed area. You should also give your plants food supplements every couple of weeks. This will replenish the nutrients that are depleted by frequent watering.