Indoor Gardening

Never Stop Growing

As the days grow shorter and summer temperatures begin to subside, it’s easy to begin feeling a sense of gardening finality. Most warm-season crops have been harvested and planning is already underway for next year’s bounty. Your aunt’s famous salsa, adorned with holiday ribbon and all, rests in the pantry awaiting its future home under the Christmas tree. Houseplants and tropicals work their way indoors, situating themselves beneath south-facing windows. For most of us, winter is a time of gardening dormancy where we enjoy the fruits of the previous year’s labor and focus on protecting our plants from the frigid elements until the sun shines a little longer and brighter on the other side of the seasons. What many don’t realize, though, is that retreating indoors doesn’t have to mean a retreat from growing our own food, all year-round.

While it’s one thing to bring your favorite Croton or Majesty Palm into the living room, there’s no doubt that growing edible plants indoors is a different animal. While horticultural principals remain the same, the inputs necessary to produce a consistent supply of healthy tomatoes in your house vary dramatically from the infrequent feedings required by your typical houseplant. Regardless, the opportunity presented by growing indoors is that you can replicate the ideal conditions for any plant of your choosing.

Keep in mind, plants follow the same rules whether they are grown indoors or out. For instance, if the life cycle of lettuce is to germinate in early spring when temperatures are still cool, go through a period of vegetative growth into early summer, then bolt and go to seed when temperatures start to peak, that’s exactly what it will do when grown indoors. If basil goes through its vegetative growth period during short days with more than 12 hours of darkness each night and then begins to flower with longer days, it will do the same under artificial lighting.

In previous (and upcoming) editions of The Kansas City Gardener, we have discussed both the required environmental conditions for particular edible plants (i.e. peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, basil, etc.) and the specific methodologies commonly employed to grow them indoors. But with winter rapidly approaching, we may not yet have covered your favorite variety. Therefore, let’s take a look at a few of the most important questions to ask when determining how to setup your indoor environment for any type of edible plant. These primary factors tend to have the greatest influence over the success or failure of an indoor grow.

What temperature and humidity levels does the plant pre-

fer? Whether you are starting seeds or working with a mature plant, temperature and humidity can have a significant impact. Are there ranges that induce the plant to bolt and go to seed? Are there ranges that improve the quality of fruit/ flower production?

What type of lighting does the

plant require? True vegetables like lettuce that are harvested before they produce seeds, tend to prefer a cooler/bluer spectrum of light with much less intensity than plants like peppers where flowering and fruit production occurs in the late summer when light intensity is much higher and the sun’s spectrum is warmer/redder.

How many of hours of darkness does the plant require each

day? Also referred to as “photoperiodism,” some plants exhibit behaviors in accordance with the number of consecutive dark hours they receive. Understanding this is vital to preventing or forcing those

behaviors indoors. Other plants are day-neutral, and the length of dark hours has little-to-no impact on their behavior.

What type of nutrition does

the plant require? Are there different stages in the plant’s lifecycle that require different fertilizer levels? For instance, a pepper plant goes through a period of vegetative growth where it requires significant amounts of Nitrogen, but when it begins to flower, excessive Nitrogen can actually prevent fruit production.

What pH level does the plant

require? Potential of Hydrogen, or pH, measures the level of acidity in a solution. Plants are only able to absorb nutrients when the water in their grow media is at the proper level. Depending on which nutrients a particular variety requires, they may not be available if the pH level is too high or low.

Considerations like airflow, grow media, container size, water quality, etc., are important in their own right but offer much more flexibility to the grower. If the primary issues aren’t properly addressed, the ancillary factors are of

little concern since the plant will be starting in a no-win situation.

When you garden indoors, you are essentially recreating your favorite plant’s ideal growing environment in the comfort of your living room, kitchen, garage or basement. You are taking into account the same variables, albeit through a different lens, as you would if you were planting in your backyard garden bed. Instead of thinking “seasons” or “calendar months,” you are taking the time to understand what it is about those units of measure that influences how your plants grow, whether that is temperature, length of day, or otherwise. With that perspective, you never have to stop growing, no matter the temperature or how many inches of snow may cover your outdoor garden plot just a few feet away.

JASON MISPAGEL Indoor Gardener

Jason Mispagel is the co-owner and operator of Year-Round Garden, a grower’s supply center serving both home and commercial customers since 2016. To contact Jason, call 816-216-6917 or jason@year-roundgarden.com.