Elegant Indoor Vegetable Gardening for Fresh Vegetables All Year Long

When the weather gets colder and the time for outdoor gardening is over, home gardeners can still turn to the pleasures of indoor vegetable gardens. Leafy crops, root crops, tomatoes, and many other kinds of vegetables are good for growing indoors.

There are aspects of growing vegetables inside that are a bit more complex than growing them outside. You are in control of things that nature usually handles, like light, temperature, and even pollination! You are responsible for making sure that your plants receive enough tending to maintain good growth and can thrive indoors.

Leafy crops and root crops need cooler indoor temperatures. It is best to place them in a bright room that is not used very often and where the temperature in the room cannot fall below freezing. These type of plants will be able to handle the cooler temperature during the daytime (usually 60 degrees) and the nighttime temperature down into the high 30s.

When you are growing hot peppers, tomatoes, sweet peppers, beans, and cucumbers, it is important to remember that they have specific temperature requirements. You should keep the daytime temperature in the high seventies. At night, the temperature should never be allowed to go below sixty degrees.

You will want to choose your indoor vegetable gardening room carefully. It should face south and stay quite warm during the winter months. It is best if this can be accomplished through the use of the sun's rays. Just as with outdoor gardening, you will want to be sure your plants get six to eight hours of sunlight daily. Clearly, your indoor garden room must have lots of bright windows for your plants to enjoy. It is possible for your plants to freeze indoors due to cold air coming off the windows. You can prevent this from happening by supplementing the room's heat with lighting. A mixture of cool-white and warm-white fluorescent lighting should do the trick.

To prevent unwanted insects and diseases, avoid using ordinary outdoor gardening soil. For the best results, choose lightweight soil mixes created with equal parts of peat, potting soil, vermiculite, and perlite. There are a number of commercially prepared lightweight soils which are designed specifically for indoor vegetable gardening.

Indoor vegetable gardening means watering more frequently. This is because they don't get any humidity in the air they would normally get during warmer months outdoors and because they're in a confined space. Take care not to over water the plants. Usually, watering when the top layer of soil feels dry to the touch should be adequate. Additional feeding must be done every couple of weeks to keep nutrients in the soil which the more frequent watering will deplete.