If you live in a temperate area, it becomes a lot more difficult to live off the land when fall and winter arrives. Once that first frost sets into the soil, your gardening days are over until the snow melts.
There are a few ways you can make up for this, though! With good planning, you can definitely supplement your diet with homegrown fruits and vegetables all year round.
There are several ways to take the produce you generate over the warmer months and make it last for use during the winter. You can dry herbs to preserve them or take fruits and vegetables, even meat, and can them at home. Just make sure you’re canning food safely to avoid dangerous botulism toxin.
The other option is to keep on growing! You might be surprised at just how many fruits and veggies you can cultivate indoors even if you don’t have a green house.
Getting Started with Organic Gardening Growing Indoors
Gardening indoors requires a little effort, and potentially some financial investment in the tools you’ll need. There’s a lot of detail that goes into indoor gardening because different plants will have different yields. Just remember that it’s very difficult to produce more than small yields from indoor gardening, and the absence of outdoor conditions can be difficult to make up for. Growing veggies indoors can certainly supplement for food production, but don’t rely on it too heavily!
With the right soil, drainage, temperature control and light, however, you might be amazed just how many things you can grow indoors, from carrots to lettuce and even tomato plants!
Although it might be tempting to set up lines of pots along windowsills, remember that beside a window may not be the ideal place to grow. Natural light during the winter is so scarce that the plants can’t thrive on it alone. And the closer plants are to windows, the more likely they will suffer from temperature shocks. It’s best to purchase a plant light and place the plants away from areas subject to temperature change, such as vents and windows. Instead, find places in your home where the temperature is often stable.
The potential of an indoor garden doesn’t have to stop at vegetables! A number of fruit plants and trees actually do quite well indoors. From watermelons, to lemons, to avocados, a variety of fruits can be grown inside your home. They also make very pleasant decoration!
Just remember that eventually, fruit trees may need to be moved outside. Pay attention to how much they grow and how well they’re doing in the house. Once they’re big and healthy enough, they’ll probably be able to survive the colder months depending on your plant hardiness zone.
When spring rolls around, you may end up with a lot of plants that you’d like to move outside. To make the most of your time, especially if you’re going to be planting trees and large numbers of plants, you may want to look into some automated tools. Garden tillers can make the job of bulk planting much easier, but there are many more exciting tools to help keep your life organic. Automated gardening tools like these harness tech innovation to make caring for your plants much, much easier. And if you’ve got a few thousand dollars kicking around, there’s a gardening robot that automates the entire process that can be customized with different hardware and software!
Not to mention that many of these tech tools can be brought inside homes and greenhouses for those colder months. That might be a little much to invest in right now (I certainly can’t afford a farmbot!), but it’s really cool to know that the tools are out there to make our out-and indoor gardening lives better.
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My husband sowed some coriander (cilantro) and basil seeds in pots in the house at the beginning of autumn and I honestly thought he was wasting his time …. the basil hasn’t really done much but we have had loads of cut and come again coriander. I just wish I had more space for more indoor edible plants over winter! #GoingGreen
HI Rosie,
Sometimes depending on the light and other factors it can be hard to get plants to start. I am glad that your coriander is doing so good for you. Having enough space can be a real problem because it does take a lot room to have lots of plants indoors with the right lighting too. Thanks for stopping by, commenting and hosting the #GoingGreen Linky party every month.