Indoor Gardening for Beginners

Whether you live in an apartment or in a short season climate in the North, you can garden indoors! Indoor gardening for beginners is easy and lots of fun! Living in a short season climate, this is how I grow fresh food for winter.

What Can you Grow Indoors?

If you had enough space, and tall enough ceilings, you could grow just about anything indoors! But for the average home or apartment, some fruits and vegetables that can do well indoors include dwarf citrus trees and tropical fruits, tomatoes, peppers, salad greens and herbs.

If you are a seed saver, you can also use these techniques to overwinter biennials for seed.

These herbs are growing in a kitchen window that faces east.

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Indoor Gardening for Beginners

What is the Difference Between Growing Vegetables and Growing Common Houseplants?

Plants grown for food do need more care than common houseplants. The houseplants most people grow are popular because they have low lighting requirements, aren’t as picky about watering, and are overall some of the easiest, and hardiest plants to grow.

If you think about it, when you are growing plants for food, you are placing much higher demands on them. A houseplant, like this shamrock, is just expected to sit there and look pretty. If, on the other hand, you are growing plants for food, you want them to produce fruit or quickly grow new leaves.

Light for Indoor Gardening

Lighting is the biggest learning curve with indoor gardening for beginners!

Fruits and vegetables need more light than houseplants, either in the form of a big, south-facing window, or from grow lights. Without adequate light, they won’t thrive and may not even survive.

Citrus trees, tropical fruits, tomatoes, peppers and salad greens all need this type of extra light. Plants that can get by with less lighting include some herbs and aloe vera, which often do fine in a window facing east or west.

Aloes actually prefer lower lighting. This happy aloe plant is growing in a small west-facing window where it gets less than an hour of direct sunlight each day.

If you have a brown thumb, aloe is a great way to get started with indoor gardening for beginners!

Aloe vera is great for burns or as a supplement, but what if you want to grow actual food indoors?

Although I’m able to grow a large garden outdoors, I live in Montana, where the growing season (from last frost of the spring to first frost in the fall) is anywhere from 80 to 100 days. Frost covers and cold frames can extend my harvest somewhat, but in the dead of winter I always end up spending a lot of money on fresh produce. Anything I can grow myself helps!

If you have a good-sized south-facing window, you can grow most of the fruits and vegetables talked about in this article. If you don’t have a south-facing window, you’ll need to invest in grow lights. This is the main expense when getting set up with indoor gardening for beginners.

What Kind of Grow Light Do I Need?

There are so many different choices now for grow lights! I think the two most important things to be aware of are the color spectrum, and energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is important, because by spending a few more dollars on a more energy-efficient light, you can save exponentially on your power bill.

Cool colored (blue spectrum) lights promote vegetative and leaf growth, while warm colored (red/orange spectrum) lights promote flowering. Cool colored lights look more natural and are more attractive if you are growing plants in your living room. You can also get full spectrum bulbs, or use one warm colored bulb and one cool colored.

Fluorescent Lights

It is possible to grow many plants under regular fluorescent bulbs instead of grow lights, but doing so is not very energy-efficient.

A better option is to use regular shop light fixtures with grow bulbs. Fluorescent lights are often full spectrum.

Fluorescent lighting is cheap and easy to find.

Although it’s considered less energy-efficient than other types of lights, the added heat that it puts out can actually be a bonus for starting seeds indoors.

Fluorescent lighting is the author’s personal favorite because that added warmth eliminates the need to use heat mats for germinating seeds. We love the iPower 2-bulb T5 grow light shown below because of its affordability and sturdy stand! When it comes to indoor gardening for beginners, the iPower is our top recommendation!

Some good choices for fluorescent lighting systems:

HID (HPS or MH) Lights

HID lighting is becoming more popular. It is twice as efficient as fluorescent, but is more expensive and does require special fixtures.

Some top picks for HID lighting:

LED Lighting

LED lighting is an energy-efficient and affordable lighting choice with lots of fun designs to choose from. Although LED lighting fixtures are probably the most aesthetically appealing choice, the bright red and blue colors can be a little disturbing in a living area.

Most LED lights are either full spectrum, or come with a switch, so you can choose between cool and warm. With the switch type, you can start off with cool spectrum while your plants are growing, and then flip the switch to warm spectrum when you’re ready to encourage flowering.

I love the wide variety of LED lighting designs available on the market!

Plasma Lighting

Plasma lighting is the new kid on the block. It’s still very expensive and hard to find. It’s advantage is a very high energy efficiency.

Find out more about grow lights here!

Fertilizing Your Indoor Garden

Plants grown in pots do need regular fertilizing. I highly recommend using an organic fertilizer or homemade compost tea. Plants grown with real organic fertilizers will actually have much higher nutrient content than those grown with chemicals!

There are some great organic indoor plant foods, which are definitely the easiest choice for indoor gardening for beginners.

My top fertilizer choice from a pricing standpoint is an organic granulated slow release fertilizer I buy in bulk from Azure Standard.

Using a slow release fertilizer means that you can fertilize every 1-3 months depending on the plant. You don’t have to fertilize every week.

To avoid any smell, I use my finger to make a little hole on the side of the pot, put my fertilizer in the hole and cover it back up with dirt. It will slowly release organic nutrients to the plant.

You can find organic granulated fertilizer here

Watering Indoor Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables grown indoors do require more consistent watering, and this can be the biggest challenge with indoor gardening for beginners,

Vegetables should not be overwatered, but will quickly start to wilt if they get too dry. You may want to experiment with different brands of potting soil available in your area to see what works best.

Citrus trees, like this dwarf lime tree, do best in a sandy, well-draining soil. I either use a locally made sandy cactus mix, or add sand to regular organic potting soil. Citrus should be allowed to dry out slightly between waterings.

Dealing with Bug Problems

Bugs, especially aphids, can be a big issue with indoor plants.

Bugs are attracted to weak plants, so the single biggest thing you can do to avoid pest problems is to take good care of your plants and keep them healthy!

If you still have problems, you can experiment with some of the homemade natural pesticide recipes that are available. You can also buy little sticky papers to trap aphids.

Our personal favorite is neem oil. Neem is a natural and organic pesticide. We dilute it with water and spray it on our plants every 1-2 weeks for aphid control.

Some Vegetables You Can Grow Indoors

Tomatoes are a fun crop for indoor gardening.

Determinate varieties will do better than indeterminate (determinate varieties get to a certain size and stop growing, while indeterminate varieties can keep growing indefinitely and get quite large). Determinate cherry tomatoes are the easiest type to grow indoors. Tumbling Tom, Tiny Tim and Orange Hat are some good options.

An indoor tomato plant can be moved outdoors during the summer, and can live several years. It will likely need a tomato cage to keep from toppling over.

These cherry tomatoes were harvested from our indoor plant in December.

Peppers are easy to grow indoors, and like tomatoes can live for several years. Smaller peppers, such as jalepenos and pimentos, are the easiest to grow indoors, but I have successfully grown bell peppers inside too! My favorite indoor pepper is the Heirloom Mini Bell Pepper mix from Baker Creek.

Salad greens will do best with a grow light, but celery does well under grow lights or in a sunny window. You can harvest celery from the same plants for months, even up to a year, by just cutting the outer stalks and always leaving the small leaves in the center. It’s a great choice to start indoor gardening for beginners!

This Redventure celery is growing in an indoor planter under lights.

Growing Fruit Indoors

There is a wide variety of dwarf fruit trees now available!

This large indoor planter has locking wheels. the inside is lined with a double layer of plastic to prevent leaks, and it has cool and warm spectrum fluorescent grow lights mounted on adjustable chains. It is planted with a young dwarf lemon, dwarf lime, dwarf orange and dwarf tangerine tree.

One advantage to growing dwarf varieties is that they can fruit much earlier than a full size tree. These young trees are already starting to flower.

Citrus trees usually need to be hand pollinated to set fruit. You can easily hand pollinate by gently brushing an artists’ paintbrush inside each flower.

“Dwarf” bananas can often get 8-10′ tall or more. If you have short ceilings, a smaller variety to try is “Truly Tiny”. Truly Tiny is a cavendish-type. That’s the kind of banana you typically find in the grocery store. You can also find dwarf varieties of red bananas and a wide variety of uniquely flavored dessert bananas.

Banana trees can get quite top-heavy and tip over, so as they grow they’ll need a wide pot or something to anchor them to the wall.

As bananas grow new leaves, the older leaves shrivel up and die. They will also start to grow smaller trees (“pups”) under the main trunk. 1-3 of the smaller trees should be left on the main plant. Extras can be divided to make new plants.

Bananas need a lot of fertilizer and water. A happy banana tree will produce one enormous cluster of fruit, then will die and be replaced by the younger trees growing underneath.

Grow lights or a big south facing window are a necessity for bananas. Without adequate light your tree will die.

I’ve successfully fruited a banana tree indoors in Montana, although the bananas were so small they weren’t really worth eating.