Welcome to Northern Homestead Indoor Garden Update – Winter 2018 on video. The outdoor garden is covered in snow and temperatures are well into freezing. But in our food production garage things are growing well. Enjoy the tour!
If you have trouble to see the video, go here.
Growing hydroponically versus growing in sol
An indoor garden is not a natural environment for a garden. Nevertheless, we are very happy to be able to grow a garden year round even though it is not all that natural. Still, it is a way better option than buying fresh produce in the winter from a store. We find that indoors hydroponic performs better than soil. Growing in water is a clean and easy way to grow food. It actually is even cheaper, unless you have a way of building new quality soil for free which we don’t.
For hydroponics, we use the products from General Hydroponics.
We prefer dry concentrated nutrients. General Hydroponics MaxiGro for Gardening is all you need to grow all kinds of greens and herbs.
Taking care of moisture in the grow room
A new thing that we added this winter is a dehumidifier. Plants and temperature fluctuations produce lots of moisture. Adding a dehumidifier has made a difference. We use the water for watering plants, so it becomes a cycle.
Heating the growing room
Last year we showed you a reality video during a very cold period what the growing room looks like. You can see it here. This year we upgraded the electric circuit in the garage to 220V which allows the Electric Baseboard Heaters to run on full power. They are set on 13C and I have yet to find them being hot. I’m sure they are heating during the night, but during the day they are always cold. So for that, it is a great and easy solution. As you see in the video we still grow tomatoes, summer plants, and also cucumbers.
What edible plants are you growing indoors? Please share in the comment below. We would love to hear it.
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Grow an indoor edible garden
Start growing food for your table in depth of winter. Take a look at all the posts we already shared about growing food indoors.
Struggling through this winter season. It hasn’t been as cold as last year but I suspect our soil is in need of some love. Tomatoes grew well, along with the herbs, but that’s it.
I hear you, getting indoor soil right is not easy. One reason we like hydroponic so much for indoor growing. Hope you can fix it, and get better results. Look into Mittleider gardening, that might be a solution for you. It looks like normal gardening but the nutrients come from fertilizers. This way you could keep your beautiful beds, but still get much better results. If you google it, you will get lots of opposition from gardeners in warm climate, sure for the outdoors I too prefer organic, but we are in the north, and we grow indoors. Keep on growing!
I was given a three tiered grow light, so in my basement I have cherry tomatoes (just flowered), beets, swiss chard, parsley, nasturtiums, a random assortment of flowers (packet of bee attracting plants; no flowers yet), and a pepper plant. I planted everything in November, and it seems to be slow growing. I think if it were warmer in my house my plants might be bigger. I have everything growing in potting soil mixed with worm castings from my friends vermiculture bin (I’d like my own, but my hubby isn’t keen on the idea. Yet), but I’d like to try hydroponic next. The air in our house has been so dry this year – any extra moisture from the plants is welcome right now.
Happy to hear that you grow an indoor garden. Plants in the winter do grow slower comparing to plants outdoors in the summer. Just keep on growing, you will be amazed how much you learn while doing it.
I can’t wait for spring! Getting some bulb activity now. The hard neck garlic is up a foot already!
How exciting! We are no where near this, still lots of snow and frost out there. Enjoy your early spring.
Thank you, so much generous information given, in a lovely voice! We live in Port Coquitlam, 25 mins from Vancouver and have the blessing of a very long growing season! Yes, keep on growing, keep learning… I call my community garden plot an experiment!
Thank you for your kind words, Terri. It is encouraging to hear this.