Indoor Vegetable Gardening

Indoor Vegetable Gardening: "Indoor Vegetable Gardening

We who live and garden in the southern Great Lakes region often have to be creative when it comes to satisfying our gardening urges during the cooler months of the year. When outdoor gardening activities wind down for the season, our attentions naturally turn to indoor gardening pursuits. Tops on the list are cultivating and growing our houseplants, maintaining cuttings for next year's garden, indoor herb gardening, and starting seeds in the latter part of the cold weather months.

One good activity that is often overlooked is growing vegetables indoors. I know an eyebrow or two might be raised at the suggestion of indoor vegetable gardening, but it can be done, within limits. Certainly pumpkins, squash, and sweet corn are not going to be items grown inside the average home! But, many leafy crops, root crops, tomatoes, and other vegetables can be grown indoors during the cold months of the year.

The rules are a little different when growing vegetables indoors. Temperature, pollination, and light requirements need more careful consideration than when one grows produce outside. The fertilization needs are also a bit different when gardening crops indoors. Nevertheless, there are some good vegetables that can be grown inside, and it is an activity that gardeners should explore.

First of all, we need to look into the particulars of growing vegetables indoors. There are some points to keep in mind:

--Vegetable seeds are sometimes hard to come by in the late summer to early fall. A good plan is to buy the seeds when they are in abundance, in the late winter to early spring. Store them according to their needs, and start your indoor vegetable garden in the fall.

--Most leaf crops such as lettuce, endive, swiss chard and the like require cooler indoor temperatur"