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Useful Tips For Indoor Organic Gardening You Should Know
Dreaming of growing your own organic produce but you live in an apartment or a house without a backyard? Fear not, organic gardening is possible indoors as well.
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More people are embracing sustainable gardening without the use of chemical pesticides and insecticides, and without wasting too much outside resources.
This is not only better for the environment, but it is better for the quality of the produce and of course, for your health and wellbeing.
With indoor gardening, going organic is much easier, because of the limited access of pests and insects to your plants.
On the other hand, you often need artificial light, such as grow lamps for growing veggies, fruits or herbs indoors, which will use electricity.
You can save the energy used for lighting your indoor garden by placing the grow lamp as close to the plant as possible without causing damage to it. You can use reflective materials and reflectors to redirect the emitted light so that it is used more efficiently too.
Sustainable Electricity For the Organic Indoor Garden
The fact is, the better you utilize your grow lamps and the lighting - the lesser energy will be used.
Investing in a high efficiency grow lighting system may seem a bit of a stretch, but in the long run, you will be saving energy, saving money for bills, as well as grow better tasting and bigger fruits and vegetables.
There are induction and LED lighting systems which are more sustainable than others as they have low power consumption and at the same time a high photosynthetically active radiation output.
To become completely sustainable, you can invest in a solar panel or wind farm to produce the energy you need for lighting up and warming up your indoor garden too.
If you are planning on using a grow tent where the lighting, temperature, and humidity are easily controlled, you can opt for a more sustainable option too.
If you can’t afford or cannot install your own solar panel or wind farm at home, you can ask your local power company for the options for sustainable energy it is offering.
There is a new technology which is still used only for office buildings and high rise buildings which uses fiber optics to deliver the collected sunlight from outside indoors. This could be an excellent opportunity for sustainable indoor gardeners in the near future too.
Water Conservation And Organic Indoor Gardening
Since water is one of the elements which is essential for growing plants both indoors and outdoors, you may want to consider ways to use it wisely if you are into sustainable organic indoor gardening.
If you are not ready to invest in a recirculation irrigation system which can save a lot of water, then you can simply make some adjustments to the watering schedule and save water too.
Watering the plants in your indoor garden right before the lighting is turned on can help save water, as it will reach the roots of the plants before evaporating.
The Grow Media Options
Even though most indoor gardeners choose to replace the soil or another medium after each growth cycle, you can opt for a recyclable or reusable medium which doesn’t need to be thrown out after the plant has completed its growth cycle.
The more times you use the medium for growing the plant, the more sustainable your indoor organic garden will be.
More organic indoor growers are choosing to build a raised bed for their indoor growing space, which they can replenish with fresh organic ingredients or with compost after every plant cycle instead of replacing it completely with a new one.
You can make your own organic soil for your indoor garden using compost, kelp meal, fish meal, coco coir, fish bone meal, bat guano, glacier rock dust or dolomite lime. These will help build up all the nutrients you need for your plants to grow in completely organic soil.
Also, organic potting soil and pre-packaged compost are available at most gardening centers, so you can go ahead and buy these readymade growing media products to start up your organic indoor garden too.
Using Reusable Pots And Containers
Just about any vegetable or fruit can successfully be grown in a container indoors. You can use any kind of container and reuse old bottles, pots and boxes to grow the plants you want, completely organically and in an eco-friendly manner.
The key is to choose the right sized container for the plants you will be growing. The larger the plant, the larger its container should be.
Choose The Best Veggies And Plants For Your Indoor Organic Garden
When you are buying your plants, make sure you pick strong and healthy ones, or if you are buying seeds, check their expiration date.
If you are buying seedlings, allow them to get acclimatized to the conditions indoors by placing them on the window sill or in a sunny spot. After a few days, they are ready to be transplanted to your organic indoor garden.
Keep in mind that tomatoes should be planted individually in separate pots or containers which are at least 8 inches in diameter. Make sure you plant them so that their roots are at least an inch beneath the soil surface.
Remember to place a stick beside the plant, which you will be using later for tying it as it grows tall.
If you want to grow beans, you can plant bush beans easily from seeds into containers which are at least 8 inches in diameter.
As for runner beans and peas, you can use hanging pots and baskets to plant them, so that the plant can hand over to the ground as it grows.
If you want to grow leaf lettuce from seed, you can use any type of container. Lettuce loves morning sunlight.
Squash plants indoors can easily replace your curtains or blinds. Plant them on the window sill and remove the curtains. Plant the squash plants in hanging pots or baskets, and as they grow they will cling to the curtain rod creating a beautiful and natural green curtain.
Organic Pest, Insect And Disease Control
As mentioned previously, one of the greatest advantages of growing an indoor garden is that it is much less prone to pest, insect and disease infestations.
This, of course, is true, if you don’t use soil from outdoors, and stick to clean, or homemade organic soil instead.
Even if there are disease or pest or insect attacks on your indoor plants, there are ways to deal with these problems without any harsh or harmful chemicals.
For example, using clove, garlic or cayenne pepper extracts have been found to be very efficient against different pests threatening your indoor plants.
Some organic indoor growers choose to make their own homemade insecticides, and others even introduce some beneficial insects to their home indoor gardens, to deal with the problem chemical-free.
Other Ways to Make Your Indoor Organic Garden Even More Sustainable
There are various little changes you can make to your indoor garden to ensure that it is not only organic but is good for the environment too.
You can reuse pots and containers, recycle the used bulbs and reuse plastic fertilizer bottles.
You can also create your own indoor compost bin so that you can turn scraps from the kitchen into organic and sustainable fertilizer.
Using energy efficient automated grow light systems, watering systems and temperature control can also make a change for the environment.
If you invest in creating a sustainable organic indoor garden you will find that the quality of your harvest will improve and that the yield will increase too.
So, it is a win-win situation.
All you need to do is to set up your sustainable organic garden and take care of it. In the end, you will be happy with what you are doing for the environment, and you will be able to rest assured that all the products you have harvested are absolutely chemical free and completely natural and healthy.
About the Author Laura Bennett
Hello, I’m Laura Bennett. I love nature especially when it comes to flowers and different kinds of plants. I started a very small garden behind my house and I named it Humid Garden. So, I created this blog to provide aspiring and inspiring thoughts about gardening for gardeners and anyone who has the intention of keeping a garden.
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