Grow Your Own Veggies Indoor This Winter

You Probably Have Most of the Items You Need
Bringing your vegetable garden indoors isn't as hard as you think it is and can be done cheaply if you are willing to do a few small projects to manage your indoor garden. The standard pots you use for outdoor container gardens will be suitable for your indoor garden however care needs to be taken for preventing spillage or over-watering from ruining your carpet or floor...many plant containers have ports that you can watch to see if water is going to come out and if you don't have this kind of pot you need trays to account for that.

Plant Stands Are Very Helpful
I built plant stands to manage my porch garden...I bought two-by-fours at Lowes and some nails and made a low-standing, multi-level stand with out much effort at all. Getting plants off the ground in your house is important to keep moisture from affecting your carpet or floor.

Start Your Plants From Seed
Seeds are your main option for starting plants indoor this time of year since garden centers only shelve starter plants in the Spring. I have acquired the habit of saving plastic resealable containers such as ones which you find ice cream in at the grocery store. Clean these well... rinse with some diluted bleach and you have a seed starter container, because milk residue is funky if you are starting seeds. Seeds start way better if you seal the container...the moisture is retained and you don't hardly ever have to re-water them before your seeds sprout. Put them on a high shelf where they get the benefit of the warmest air. I've started seeds in big containers such as full grown plants grow in and inevitably they are hard to cover to retain moisture and they frequently leak...they're very inefficient to start seeds in.

Grow Lights: the Biggest Expenditure
I bought lights...this is the biggest investment by far for indoor gardening; the lights, though, will also produce heat which you'll notice right away because your furnace won't cycle as long depending of course on how many grow light s you obtained. I bought two grow light fixtures from internet sites that had them to my door in less than a week. My small apartment is heated to more than seventy degrees by the two 400 watt bulbs burning simultaneously...young plants can be forced to maturity by artificial light exposure of sixteen hours a day..this time of year apartments can be comfortably heated by two fixtures running sixteen hours a day...depending on how far South you live the heat from these bulbs can entirely heat your apartment or at the very least the room you are doing your vegetables in. There are good deals on the internet...one internet site I bought my lights from sold me a light fixture, two grow light bulbs, and a heavy duty timer for less than $400 including delivery. The vegetables you'll get will also save you trips to the store.

Maintaining Climbing Vines and Tomatoes
I've bought plastic trellises at garden centers through the years that I'm ready to bring inside to support my tomatoes that are now seedlings. The rate your seedlings grow is up to you...I keep my sprouts under the grow lamp 16 hours a day. I expect to reduce the artificial light they receive to twelve hours as they are getting ready to go to flower...I expect them to go to flower around Christmas; I started the tomato plants from seed on Halloween. Flowering plants require fewer hours of sunlight as they are approaching the flowering stage or the flowers won't form.

Choose the Appropriate Variety of Seeds
The seeds you choose are important...choose dwarf varieties for your vines unless you are happy with uncontrollable and unmanageable vines...short vines can be trained to a trellis. I'm growing egg plants and I anticipate the trellises I have will support them. I grew grape tomatoes from seed this past Summer...I'm growing those now; I am also growing yellow tomatoes now. Both these plant varieties will easily be secured to trellises.

Consider Nutrients
Plant food is important to consider...some people have tried to vermipost or to use worms to make manure for their garden plants (vegetable plants need some kind of manure or they won't grow well and will be stunted.) I tried this and I found that worms go dormant after being refrigerated and they don't eat much food and I believe the ones I bought died. I'll try to find an expert opinion on the subject of worms and dormancy in a future gardening story on this site.

Plastic Shelves
I found that the plastic storage shelves you find in big box stores are great for indoor gardening...the ones that can be put together yourself are flexible...I attach an extra set of the legs together to form a larger vertical space between the shelves. I hung one of my grow lights on one of these extended vertical spaces and I put plants right underneath the grow light that way. Buy the shelves that have gaps in them so light can penetrate to the lower shelves.