Year-Round Harvest

January 2020

Cover Page

Year-Round Harvest
An Introduction to Indoor Gardening

While gardening is largely seen as an outdoor activity, you can also grow and harvest a wide variety of edible plants indoors to enjoy fresh produce at any time of year.

Whether the winter weather has shut down your outdoor garden for the season or you just don’t have very much outdoor space in which to grow, indoor growing is always an option. A free windowsill is really all you need to get started. Once you’ve selected a place to grow, here are some tips for indoor gardening success.

1. Choose the right plants

For your indoor garden, you will want to choose plants that mature quickly, are known to thrive under artificial light, and remain relatively compact throughout their growing cycle. Thankfully, there are many types of plants that will meet these conditions, allowing you to grow a nice variety. Leafy greens and root vegetables are usually the top choices.

Some of the best plants for growing indoors are:

• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Beets
• Herbs
• Kale
• Radishes
• Scallions
• Swiss chard

2. Gather your containers

Before you start growing, you need to make sure you have many different sizes of pots to accommodate different types of plants at different growth stages. For example, shallow greens usually do just fine in smaller containers but more deeply rooted plants are going to require considerably more space. Seed packets will often provide information about a plant’s height and spread to give you an idea of how much space it will need.

3. Provide enough light

The most important part of indoor gardening is making sure your plants get enough light. Placing your plants near a south-facing window is ideal. However, you will likely still need supplemental lighting, especially during the winter when not even the sunniest window in your home will receive very much daylight. This can easily be corrected by purchasing some grow lights at your local home hardware store and hanging them directly above your plants.

4. Use a quality potting mix

When getting your planters ready, make sure you fill them up with a high-quality indoor potting mix rather than soil from outside. Outdoor soil may contain pests and weeds and probably won’t drain well, while a potting mix is much looser and will come with added nutrients. The existing nutrients in the soil will likely be enough to give your plants a good start, and you can continue to add fertilizer as they grow.

5. Stay on top of watering

Potted plants generally need more frequent watering than plants grown outside. Each plant is also going to drink water at a different rate. Check the soil on a regular basis and water your plants generously when the surface is dry to the touch. Add enough water at once so that it begins to run through the pot’s drainage holes.

Having freshly grown produce to add to your recipes can make cooking at home a lot more fun. With just a bit of extra time and effort, you can grow some of your favourite ingredients indoors at any time of year.

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