If you live in an apartment you are probably envious of the people having the privilege to live in the country that have land to actually grow a garden on, and they really have no problems concerning light, temperature and humidity, because their plants are in the ideal growth area, out in the open. Although fortunately, you do have an alternate to that, but it requires some work. If you do live in an urban area, there are possibilities of growing your garden inorganically indoors. There are also alternates to maintain the right amount of light, soil, and temperature. Another thing you could choose is to grow your plants hydroponically, where you grow them without any soil. Well here are a few tips I have to offer for those thinking about indoor gardening.
The most important thing is adequate amount of light. Plants need light in order to create their own food naturally through photosynthesis, and they need the right amount of it. Too little would cause them to be malnourished, too much would cause scorching. So you have to maintain the right amount of light. You could do that by buying an incandescent lamp or florescent light, so you don’t have to find the largest window in your house to grow your garden by. This would give you the freedom of growing your garden anywhere in your house you see fit.
Next is the amount of space that you have in your apartment to grow your indoor garden. You would want to choose plants suitable for the amount of space you have, or it would just look ugly and over spaced, and you wouldn’t have a nice beautiful garden like you intended to. Choose an area that has very little traffic, and is not in the corner somewhere, so you could access it from all the sides.
What comes next is the temperature control. If your house is well insulated, or you have some form of temperature control available, you are in luck, because most plants need around 70 degrees to stay good and healthy. When the temperature gets too hot or cold beyond that, you would have a problem of your plants dying out. Make sure the area around your crops stays humid, or your plants will loose too much water through transpiration and will die.
This leads to the final part, having an adequate soil mixture, or growing your plants hydroponically. Hydroponic is where you hold your plants in some form of rock sand, and then feed them with a nutrient liquid mixture every now and then. If you choose soil, you have to make sure that your soil is properly mixed with the adequate nutrients, and so is good for plants to grow. Choosing hydroponic method, however, helps a lot with low space requirement, and a 50% reported increase in the plant growth.
Remember, before you make that leap to grow an indoor garden, make sure you have done your homework, and check out properly if you have all the above mentioned facilities.
Indoor gardening is definitely a lot easier than most people imagine. This year I have grown basil, chives, rosemary and oregano. I am also growing mint and I have some nice strawberries on the way too!
Great article.
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