Indoor Container Garden

It is so cold outside - it actually snowed this morning. There's a front coming in tonight and supposedly bringing 40mph winds (hopefully no more power outages).

I have my starts for the victory garden but it's been too cold to plant them yet. I do hope it warms up because my peas are taking over. However, I've decided I'd like to try and get an indoor garden going to cover the cold weather months - have fresh veggies all year long!

I did a fair amount of research as to what kinds of plants would do well. I purchased seeds for my favorite salad makings: spinach, radishes, green onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers. They were all types taking up a small amount of space and have fairly quick harvesting turn around. For example, these particular kind of cucumbers vine only 20 to 24 inches. The tomatoes are cherry-sized. And the radishes are ready for harvesting in 29 days (very exciting because they are starting to come up today).

Seeds selected

Let's not forget I have a little helper. He really wanted to plant one of his spheres (yes, that is a ball inside the pot in the top photo). I took a few photos of him playing with the pots before I filled them with the soil. We are going for a mostly organic indoor garden. The seeds are not organic but everything else is so I figure if I can keep it that way from here on out we'll pretty much have an organic garden.

With container gardening it is important to insure the plants get adequate nutrients since they cannot spread their roots deep into the ground. Thus, I purchased a special kind of soil that has fertilizer built into it - I was worried with starting seedlings and putting in extra fertilizer that I might kill them. It is good for three months and then I can add an organic fertilizer but by then they should have mature systems established.

Soil selected

I also went to great lengths to find pots that would allow infrequent watering. I am hoping to be starting school soon and with that and chasing the T Rex there might be days when the indoor garden does not get watered. Therefore, I selected pots that have built in reservoirs. When the plants reach maturity they can go up to two weeks between watering.

Here you can see the reservoir system and when they reach maturity I will be watering them from the bottom - on the right you can see the watering station.

So, hopefully all my bases are covered. It's been five days since I planted the seeds and thus far the radishes are starting to peak through the soil. The seed package was right - they DO grow fast! I will keep you posted.

Happy gardening and wishes for warmer days...