Sunflower microgreens in our basement grow room.
Winter is here, but don’t give up on gardening! It’s time to plant an indoor winter garden! It’s amazing what you can grow inside with a little light and TLC. You can grow herbs like basil, mint, thyme and rosemary in a sunny windowsill. Lettuces, arugula and spinach will grow in a sunny south-facing window too. You can even grow cherry tomatoes or chili peppers or root vegetables like carrots or beets if you’re willing to provide a grow light for about 16 hours each day. You don’t need fancy pots or special tools, so indoor winter gardening doesn’t have to break your piggy bank.
Lettuces in the grow room in December.
Place your garden in a room that stays above sixty degrees at night for optimal results. You’ll need some high-quality gardening soil, and planters, trays, or pots. You can even make yourself a growing tray out of a used aluminum foil container, or re-purpose a jar or can as a pot. Be sure to provide some drainage. You can use all of that nonrecyclable plastic packaging for drainage trays under your growing containers. If you’re trying root vegetables, get a bigger pot at least six inches deep, and an even bigger pot or bucket for cherry tomatoes. Winter gardening will be easier if your growing room also has a water source, and, if you’re going to use grow lights, electricity.
You might, if you’re brave, want to try growing mushrooms indoors. The best source I’ve found for kits is www.fungiperfecti.com. They’re fascinating to grow, but take a bit of attention with misting requirements. You won’t need artificial lights for these. I tried oyster and shiitake successfully a couple of years ago. You can purchase a sawdust medium that’s already inoculated with spores, then just follow the directions on the package. And mushrooms boost the human immune system, something we should all be paying attention to this winter. Fungi Perfecti has a short article on mushroom varieties and immunity at https://fungi.com/blogs/articles/mushrooms-and-the-immune-system
One of the most popular indoor garden crops these days is microgreens. Microgreens are baby greens, grown in soil, often with artificial light, and harvested young, in 1-3 weeks, just after they leaf out. They’re a brilliant green—a welcome sight in the dead of winter! And they pack a nutritional punch. The University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in conjunction with the USDA found that microgreens contain from four to forty times more nutrients than their mature counterparts. My favorite microgreens are sunflowers and pea shoots, but we grow about eight different kinds. We use grow lights and keep the lights about two inches above the plants, moving them up as the plants grow. You can harvest microgreens when they’re about three inches high, using a scissors. Some, like pea shoots, will re-grow after harvesting.
Microgreens are different than sprouts, although they’re often called “soil sprouts” because they grow in soil. Traditional sprouts, like alfalfa sprouts, are grown in the dark and rinsed regularly until they just start to open. When you eat a sprout, you eat only the sprouted part of the plant. With microgreens, you’re eating the earliest leaves and stem. Traditional sprouts are very nutritious, too, and if you don’t have any south windows and don’t want to get grow lights, you can grow them easily in a cupboard. Here’s a website with directions https://www.darngoodveggies.com/plant-basics-how-to-grow-sprouts-in-a-jar/
In our house, we have a basement room that used to house a hot tub. It’s warm and has no windows, but does have a shower, sink, and toilet—how convenient, eh? We use a small fan to circulate the air. Fungus gnats have been a regular problem for us—and I just found a solution at https://indoorgardening.com/eliminate-fungus-gnats-once-and-for-all/! Be careful to buy good potting soil, organic preferably. We don’t use any artificial chemicals. Diluted fish emulsion works well for fertilizer if you can stand the smell. We invested in shelves with attached grow lights several years ago. A little pricey, but they have served us well for a long time. (https://www.gardeners.com/buy/sunlite-3-tier-led-grow-light/8595554.html ) There are lots of You Tube videos on making your own grow shelves with lights, too. We don’t have large windowsills in our house, but if you do, a south-facing window will do just fine.
Kale in the grow room in January.
We grow kale and chard to full size for soups and sautés, mizuna, arugula and mesclun lettuce mix for salads, basil for some of our favorite dishes, and lots of microgreens. I shouldn’t really say “we,” because my partner Ellen is the real gardener. She already has our first crop of microgreens planted this year and is starting on the lettuce, kale, chard and basil. And we grow cat grass—our felines delight in winter edibles. Wheat grass is also pretty easy to grow, and some folks use that for juicing—it’s also packed with vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. You can get wheat berries for planting at a natural foods store.
Winter gardening allows us to have fresh greens all winter, no matter how cold and snowy it is outside. If you just aren’t into this at all, you can buy both sprouts and microgreens at the store. Natural Harvest Food Coop has Minnesota-grown microgreens for sale and they usually have sprouts too. My favorite winter microgreen dish is to cook up some spicy ramen soup and pour it over sunflower shoots. You can add your favorite herbs and feel proud of yourself for eating your fresh greens in January!