The summer months are starting to come to an end and thus, for in my area, the gardening will soon be over. Since I love fresh produce on my table, a couple of weeks ago I started my indoor winter garden. Picture above are some of the plants that I have growing for this winter. There are 4 "Tinny Tim" tomato plants, 2 "Bloody butcher" heirloom tomato plants, 4 green pepper plants, 2 cucumber plants, celery, basil, sage, thyme, and parsley. I still have leaf lettuce, onions, beets, and spinach that I want to plant, but I will wait for another three weeks before I plant those.I am also toying with the idea of planting some dwarf green beans, but I haven't made up my mind on that yet.
While it is impossible to grow indoors all the fresh produce that I would like to have, still, come January or February of 2014, the produce that I get from those plants will taste mighty fine when they have been freshly picked and on my table. Not only that, but if a blizzard should hit during this upcoming winter, or something else happens that prevents me from getting to the store, the fresh veggies will be an extra special treat and come in very handy.
I will eventually need more space for the plants than what my simple table in front of the windows will allow. When the plants reach that point, I will go vertical with my garden and transplant the tomatoes into a "do-it-yourself" "Topsey Turvey" (follow link for instructions on how to do that). Then I will hang my DIY planters on a curtain rod on the top of the window. I will also trellis the cucumbers using dowel rods. In addition to those things, I will be using some grow lights that have been mounted on the undersides of shelves on an old bookcase that I have which will house some of the low shade plants such as the lettuce and spinach.
Indoor gardens take a lot more care and work than outdoors ones do, but I feel they are more than worth it. While indoor gardens do not produce like traditional gardens (at least they don't for me) it is something and something in things like this, are always better than nothing.I would encourage you to give an indoor winter garden a try and see how it works for you. If nothing else, tending to the plants does help to remove the "blahs" of the short days and long winter nights.
Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)
