Growing an indoor vegetable garden

Obviously you’re not going to grow watermelons and large pumpkins in an indoor window box garden, but you can grow many edible crops beyond herbs.

Considerations for an indoor garden…

Sunlight is the key ingredient for a successful indoor garden of edibles. If you’ve got it, lucky you. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we get some sunlight shining though our windows during the winter, but not tons. If you want to try and grow root crops and leaf crops you can get away with some shade time, but veggies that produce fruit of some sort usually need at least 5-6 hours of sunlight per day, and that’s a minimum. Your veggies will be better off with 9-10 hours of sunlight per day.

Plus, you have to consider window placement. Right now my largest windows are shaded by a ton of trees so getting direct sunlight to any plants I grow there is tough, even in summer. You can consider grow lights though if you get very little indoor sunlight. If you have some sunlight you can increase the effect a little with light reflective materials around the plants such as white rocks, foil, or a white, not dark table or window surface.

When getting your containers ready to plant, you’ll need a good soil mix that’s lightweight and not from your yard, suitable containers, and trays unless you want water everywhere. See some tips on how to plant a window box garden for more tips on choosing containers and soil.

To increase the humidity around your veggies try filling the container trays with rocks – either around the container or if the rocks are level enough, set the containers directly on them.

Unless you have a large garden window and huge planting containers, you’ll need to grow smaller plants indoors. That doesn’t mean you choices are totally limited though. You can still grow edibles like bush beans, peppers, endive, carrots, radishes, various lettuce varieties tomatoes and more. Especially look for miniature or dwarf varieties of plants and seeds.

Some indoor container veggie ideas include: