How To Plant Vegetables Indoors

To begin your indoor vegetable garden, gather up any planters or containers that you can punch holes into. Also you'll need a tray to put underneath your planter or container to catch any water. Punch about 4 holes in the bottom of the container for drainage purposes (if your using a plastic milk container or something along those lines. After you have your containers, you'll need a few gardening essentials. Buy a big bag of potting soil, pete disks or pellets, small garden shovel, watering can, gardening gloves, and of course the vegetable seeds.

Decide what vegetables that you want to grow. Three really good indoor vegetable plants are cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes.

The basics for growing tomatoes are sunlight and warm temperatures. If you have a window that receives at least four to six hours of sunlight, you're in business. This means a south or west exposure. The south side may actually make a better exposure during the winter months than in summer. The sun is lower in the sky then, and the rays can slant in through the windows. You may even find that tomatoes do better indoors in the winter than they do in the summer if your house is air-conditioned. (Tomato plants don't like chills of any kind.)

Plan on starting your tomato plants from seed. The following tomatoes are good for planting indoors: Tiny Tim Tomatoes, Sweet Baby Girl Cherry Tomatoes, and Sugar Daddy Cherry Tomatoes. Sow the seeds in individual compressed peat disks. When soaked in water, these disks expand to small, 1-inch pots complete with soil mix and plant nutrients; all you do is add the seed and water and care for them until the seedlings emerge. Plant three or four seeds to a pot, and snip off all but one of the seedlings after they're up and growing. When each seedling has acquired three or four sets of leaves, plant it, peat pot and all, into a larger pot - 8 to 10 inch for the miniature or cherry tomato, a 1-gallon container for larger tomatoes.

Fertilize the plants at transplanting time, again in three weeks, and about once a week while they are producing fruit.

If you want homegrown cherry tomatoes for the December holidays, start your seeds no later than the middle of October. Protect the plants from drafts. If necessary, rig up a small screen between the plant and the window to protect from drafts during the night.

Tomatoes raised indoor may need a substitute for the bees and breeze to accomplish pollination; otherwise, the plants may bloom but not set fruit. Each day while the plants are in blossom, give them a gentle shake to distribute the pollen. Remember, too, that new blossoms will be opening each day over quite a long period of time.

For more information on growing tomatoes, visit Tips on Growing Tomatoes.

Of course, we all know the biggest advantage of starting an indoor herb garden is that it is a cost-effective and convenient alternative to buying herbs at much higher prices in a supermarket. Having an indoor herb garden is a wonderful idea! Growing herbs indoors not only allows to to snip parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, or mint and add them to recipes when cooking, but did you know that growing herbs indoors offer another delightful benefit? Growing herbs indoors also can allow you to add a wonderful fresh fragrance to your home! If your considering growing an indoor herb garden, follow these tips to get the best results.

Indoor Herb Gardens and Light
Basically, indoor herb gardens require at least 4-5 hours of light, water, air humidity, and freedom from droughts and extreme temperature. Kitchens are probably the best place to grow an indoor herb garden! Remember to place your herb garden containers by the sunniest window in home for the best lighting. Most herbs grow better and look more attractive when placed in groups. If sufficient light is a problem consider a grow light, or for a great indoor garden grow fresh herbs indoors with an areogarden!

Ideal Temperatures for Indoor Herb Garden
Indoor herb gardens prefer an ideal temperature of about 60-70 degrees. Herbs will tolerate the temperature range of 45-75 degrees, but they will not thrive for long.

Watering An Indoor Herb Garden
Water an herb garden making sure you don't over water it. The soil should always be moist, but not drenched. Your indoor herb garden can have any number of herbs depending on the amount of space your planting them in. If the area that your planting your herbs in is small, you might want to keep the amount of herbs you plant to a minimum of four to five herbs.

Growing Herbs for Natural Fragrance:

Add that special fragrance to different rooms in your home. Below are a few ideas on how to use herbs to add a fresh and natural smell to a room.

*Grow a clipped bay or sweet myrtle in a sunny entrance hall.

*Peppermint smells wonderful in the moist air of a bathroom.

*Healing aloe vera next to the medicine chest.

*Grow scented geraniums, sage or lemon verbena to scent a livingroom.

*Soothing lavender smells wonderful in the bedroom.

*Hanging herb baskets that are planted with sage and trailing catmint in a stairwell.

*Culinary herbs can be planted in wall planters on a sunny kitchen wall.

Shop Burpee.com for Herb Assortment

Lettuce is a good nibble crop and an attractive houseplant, so whether you grown enough to make a full-scale salad every week is really irrelevant.

Choose a container wide enough to allow for two or three rows, and you can wind up with a real lettuce-bed look. Sprinkle the seeds on the surface of the dampened soil. Cover very lightly with more dampened soil mix. Lettuce likes lots of water, too, more than most houseplants. Prop your lettuce beds up close to the lights while the plants are still seedlings, but lower them as the plants grow so that the tops are 10 inches or so away from the lights. Fluorescent lights do not give off much heat, but even so, lettuce likes it on the cool side, and leaves will tend to be limp is they are kept too close to the light.

You can thin out a few seedlings for eating within three weeks and then begin to take outer leaves by the following week or so. New leaves will put out for a couple of months, at which point they begin to toughen. If you are following a reseeding program, new plants will be coming along to take their place. The best lettuce varieties for indoor planting are Oak Leaf, Tom Thumb, and Buttercrunch.

Shop Burpee.com for Lettuce

Your indoor vegetable garden would look lovely growing on this indoor garden stand. A beautifully styled iron stair step plant stand has accented elegant scroll and cast details. Constructed of steel tubing and solid wire, this plant stand holds a plant on each of the three steps. The finish is black epoxy powder coat with hand-rubber gold accents.

Purchase this plant stand and more gardening essentials at: