A guest article by Danny Donchev of GrowAce.com
There is a potential that you can get your green plants lively throughout the year. Through indoor gardening, you are able to start new plants and grow new greens in the midst of a bad weather condition. Indoor gardening doesn’t know about seasons. It helps you create a perfect environment for different specialty plants.
This is the best way that you can use to grow your own fresh and healthy food. The main challenge that many people face in growing their best greens is ending seasons. The season might not be long enough.
The other challenge might be that your outdoor space is not getting enough sunlight. You might actually not be having any outdoor space. Worry no more. Our guide to indoor gardening will reveal to you how you can grow your greens without any outdoor space.
For any indoor gardening to take place, lighting is essential. Remember the chlorophyll and the photosynthesis class? If you do, sunlight must be present for any growth of greens to happen. Without sunlight, your plants will become tall, thin and weak.
Grow lights are available in the market in different varieties. They will depend on their cost as well as their effectiveness. A grow light is not just a bulb. There is a lot more to this. We have talked more about the lighting in indoor gardens towards the end of this article.
Timer
This is not a mandatory requirement for an indoor garden. The purpose of the timer is simply making your life easier. For healthy development, your pants need to sleep. They need darkness like any other plant to sleep and grow. A timer will, therefore, help you in turning the grow lights on and off. This will save you the hassle of having to remember to do it and you might at times do it in uneven hours.
Rubber–Backed Rug
You need a mat. A rubber backed rug would as well function the same purpose. It helps you protect your floor from accidental spills that happen on your floor. These happen when you are refilling the water reservoir or when you are performing any other maintenance in the garden. Those that have used this rug can attest to the great functionality it offers.
A fan
Your plants need good aeration. Proper air circulation helps your plants to remain in good standing. Every living thing like humans needs air. Fresh air means healthy plants. A fan will keep the air moving and prevents problems like the leaf fungi as well as garden pests.
It’s not worth the risk. A plant may appear healthy but contains certain pests. It is very difficult to eradicate pests once they get to the indoor garden. Remember there is no natural predator in the indoor gardens unless you introduce them.
Greens, herbs and any other leafy plants are the best to grow in the indoor gardens. Some of the best varieties include
• Kales • Leeks • Lettuce • Spinach • Lemongrass • Lavender • Dill • Garlic chives • Rosemary among others
The list is actually endless. The fun part or gardening is trying something new. You can also try others like peas and see how they come out.
Light
The grow lights need to be on at least for 14 hours daily. This should give you great results. You can as well use longer light hours. The minimum darkness period that you ought to keep your plant in is 6 hours.
Temperature
Right temperatures boost the reproduction as well as the growth of plants. Very high temperatures might burn and destroy your crops. Low temperatures as well might make the reproduction inactive. The right condition ought to be around 65 to 75 degrees.
Pump Timer
Settings for your pump timer ought to be fixed in the right way. On normal conditions, have it functioning 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off. In a cool indoor environment, however, you can change the setting to 15 minutes on and 45 minutes off to help you save energy and prevent over watering.
Indoor Lighting
Having improvements in plant lighting can help your indoor gardens grow healthily. Light gives you an entirely new experience to blossom.
Some lights emit the UV light that activates plants natural defense mechanisms. This means that in case your plant is submitted to certain unnatural chemicals they fight back to their ability before they are affected.
The UV light helps in speeding up the germination process. This benefits the starting seeds in the indoor garden.
The light affects the plant's smell, color, taste and even the resistance to diseases. This happens since exposing a plant to the light it produces more defensive proteins. The presence of these proteins in a plant is what leads to these benefits and effects.
They grow lights have a low cost of maintenance. Their aim is emitting the color spectrum required by the plant for photosynthesis purpose. This makes them consume less power compared to the traditional methods.
It’s easy to change the condition in your house. Different plants require different temperatures. There are for instance herbs that you can choose to plant and then you are forced to change the temperature conditions.
You don’t require a big space. An indoor garden can be set in your house in any place that you will.
Defeats disability. Disability is not inability. Through indoor gardening, a disabled who loves gardening is given a platform to practice the activity and make it come to be.
Offers the best skills to a gardening beginner. If you have a passion for gardening and you want to become a gardener, this is the best chance to exploit. The challenges here are less and you get to learn more.
You can grow diverse varieties of plants indoors. Many people assume that to grow vegetables and flowers you must have an outside backyard. With an indoor garden, you can do so and even have many other plants.
This knowledge should get you ready to own and grow your first indoor garden. It is the only garden where seasons, light and planting space as all a thing of the past. This is usually done by an average homeowner as small-scale and at some points, it’s done through the industrial scale in greenhouses. You, however, need to fully ensure that you have good access to a source of light, clean water and more so a way of supporting the plants as they get bigger.
