Indoor Greenhouses - Gardening Year Round Indoors

Indoor greenhouses can solve several problems for gardeners. For example, if you don't have a garden, or even a patio or a balcony, then gardening indoors in a greenhouse may be your only option for growing plants, be it small vegetables or even flowers if your exterior lighting is minimal.

Indoor greenhouses are also great for starting seedlings in the spring or for your fall garden. Many nurseries seem to forget that fall can be the most productive time of the year for many gardens, and the only way for many gardeners to get plants for transplanting is to grow them on their own.

If you are trying to grow plants during the winter months, a greenhouse can be a good way to maintain the proper moisture levels. In many homes the wintertime relative humidity drops quite low (that's why you get all the static electricity discharges when you walk across the carpet) and a greenhouse will help keep the relative humidity elevated for the plants so they don't dry out so quickly. The same thing is true for the temperature control, a greenhouse can give the proper temperature for seed germination and other plant needs.

The simplest of all indoor greenhouses are the windowsill greenhouses. These are often simply small plastic containers that hold a number of small peat pots or peat pellets as seed starters, and the box has a clear plastic top that acts to hold in the moisture while letting the light shine in. On some larger units they might include a simple electric heating element (basically a length of resistance wire that heats up when plugged in) to help keep the seeds warm enough to germinate when sitting on a windowsill in the winter months.

Another way to build your own indoor greenhouse is to use a set of fluorescent grow lights in a fluorescent bulb fixture, and hang it over a shelf to provide the light necessary for the plants. This will allow you to grow larger plants than those that fit under the lid of a windowsill unit, but the heat and humidity control is not really handled in this setup.

The most effective approach is using what is sometimes known as a growing rack. These look like a set of shelves, usually 2 or 4 shelves, and they come equipped with a plastic shroud that surround the shelving and provides the environmental control. These portable greenhouses usually have provisions for, and sometimes include, grow lights that sit a few inches above the shelves.

With shelves like these you can grow full sized house plants, or even larger garden sets like tomato plants with little trouble. And they take up no more room than a typical bookshelf. You can choose to put them near a window, but since they can hold grow lights you are free to put them wherever is convenient, even putting them in the basement away from all natural lighting.