We started with growing a four-season garden before passive solar greenhouses for year-round growing became popular. Instead, we converted part of an old garage into a food production place and experimented with growing food year-round. Here is an honest 8 years of year-round growing in zone 3 ...
Indore Garden
Four Season Greenhouse/Growing Room Review
8 years have passed since we started our adventure of building a four-season greenhouse/growing room at the back of our garage, and it's time for an honest review. If you are new here, welcome! Northern Homestead is in Alberta Canada, growing zone 3, 51 latitude parallel north. The ...
Winter Solstice 2021 Indoor Garden Update
It is December 21, 2021 today. It being the shortest day of the year, we thought it was a good time for an indoor garden update. Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere is the beginning of winter, not sure what we had the last month though ;), and it is also the beginning of longer and brighter ...
Indoor Decorative Plants
Here at Northern Homestead, we talk about indoor plants a lot, and we usually mean edible plants. Today we want to discuss indoor decorative plants deviating from our usual growing an indoor edible garden. Decorative houseplants have their place too. And we grow lots of them. The many pictures will ...
Growing Cucumbers Indoors
Cucumbers are a really fun plant to grow. They are so quick that one can almost see the growth. Growing cucumbers indoors allows us to grow them in the off-season and also during a cooler summer. A win-win in a cold climate. Indoor cucumbers in our experience grow fast and expire fast. It's ...
Troubleshooting in an Indoor Edible Garden
An indoor garden is an unnatural environment. There is less light, no pollinators, and no natural air movement. We have addressed most of it in our previous posts. The closer you can come to a natural environment, the less challenging the growing experience will be. However, since we can't avoid ...
Temperature for an indoor edible garden
Temperature for an indoor edible garden is just as important as for an outdoor garden. Neither will you grow successfully cool weather crops during the hot summer months nor heat-loving plants during the cool season. Indoor edible plants also need to be planted according to room temperature. The ...
Additional light for an indoor edible window garden
To grow edible plants successfully you need around 12 hours of daylight (except for sprouts and microgreens). It does not have to be all sunshine, but it has to be a bright light. A plant will not die if it does not get the light needed, but it will not grow much either. Additional light for an ...
What to Grow in an Indoor Edible Garden
What to grow in an indoor edible garden? That's a great question. The answer depends on two things: What are the growing conditions? What do you want to grow? If your indoor growing conditions are on the cooler side, and the light conditions present a cloudy day, grow leafy greens. With ...
N.F.T. Downspout Hydroponics Setup
We have been growing food in the N.F.T. Downspout hydroponics now for a few years. It is our preferred choice for indoor gardening. In this post, we are showing you how to set up a simple NFT downspout Hydroponics system. There are different types of hydroponic systems: Water Culture, Ebb ...
