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| Last year’s seedlings |
For years I’ve successfully started my outdoor garden from seeds germinated indoors, weeks ahead of time. A couple of years ago I bought this amazing LED grow light that made my seedlings flourish like never before. The first winter I bought it I tried growing a number of veggies and herbs, not intending to keep them very long. I was just curious how they’d do.
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| Indoor garden |
But a few weeks under the light gave me fully edible chard, collards, parsley, basil and other herbs. The tomato plants had a little tomatoes on them and the green beans had miniature beans growing. I was impressed!
This fall I decided it would be a fun experiment to try to make it through the entire winter growing tomatoes and herbs indoors. I wish I’d started earlier, like maybe in September. But I didn’t get things planted until after Thanksgiving. I started with the typical little plastic seed packs and seed starter mix. One each of three different types of tomatoes: Costoluto Genovese, Brandywine and Roma. Some basil, dill, parsley, oregano and sage. Rosemary from the store. I also started some white sage, which I never had luck germinating previously.
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| White Sage & Dill |
Once the seeds sprouted, I moved them to the window in the guest bedroom. It’s south-facing so it gets a lot of our hot Colorado winter sun. It’s also the warmest and most temperature place in the house. I hung the grow light over the plants using a light stand with a boom arm. The light was just under 12″ from the plants. I plugged the light into a timer– one less thing to think about.
Within about 3 weeks the plants were outgrowing that space. I moved the guest room furniture to a different room to make more space. I bought this great stainless rack at target and placed it front of the window. Since the shelves are very adjustable, I gave the now overgrown tomatoes a shelf to themselves, with a short shelf above them for the herbs. The grow light sits on yet another shelf above that. I position the herbs in a way that the tomatoes below them can still get light from the LED and everyone is happy.
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| Lemon tree |
In the beginning I was only running the grow light from 4 pm (sunset) until 10 pm. But the plants weren’t looking as healthy as they should. They weren’t the deep green I wanted and some were getting a little spindly. A happy plant will look strong and stocky. So I increased grow light time until midnight. That, plus the slightly longer daylight since we’re past the solstice has made a big improvement. I added a cool temp humidifier, although I’m not sure I need it. On sunny days I swear it gets close to 90 in there! I found a variegated lemon tree at the grocery store and that’s now producing new leaves. Let’s see if I can keep it alive.
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| Basil! |
I’ve been using the herbs for cooking almost every day. The basil especially impresses me since I think of them needing a lot of light in the garden, but they look perfectly normal indoors.
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| Babies! |
The tomatoes have little fruits on them and I’m curious if they’ll get large enough to ripen. And how long might that take? If they’re still around in late May, I will most likely introduce them to the outdoors. I’m also curious if they will taste better than store-bought tomatoes. If they don’t, I’ll ditch my goal of growing tomatoes indoors in the winter and just stick to herbs. After all, why buy those teeny $4.00 packets of herb snippets in the grocery store when it’s so easy to grow my own for the cost of one seed?
If the tomatoes are a success, I’ll keep better records next year on plant dates, grow time and even photograph them weekly to have a clearer idea of how they’re doing.
It’s now early February. I’ll update this post at some point to let you know how things are getting along. Wish me luck!