Table Of ContentIndoor Garden For Your Home: A No-Fluff Guide To Vertical Gardening And
Other Small Garden Ideas
Copyright 2012 PAXMAN LLC
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Table of Contents
Introduction
VERTICAL INDOOR GARDENING
Location
Mess
Moss and Lichen
Arranging Your Plants
Decorative Indoor Plants
Indoor Herbs
Hanging Tomatoes and Strawberries
Starting with Seeds versus Plants
Brick Wall Moss Art
INDOOR CONTAINTER GARDENING
MINIMUM TOOLS NEEDED
THE PROPER ENVIRONMENT
SETTING DOWN ROOTS
Coconut Fibers
Clay pellets
Perlite
Vermiculite
Rockwool
Silica Rock
Grow Cubes
CONTAINERS
Plastic Totes
Plastic Pipes
WATER QUALITY
NUTRIENTS
LIGHTING
Spotlight Lamps
LED Grow Lights
Metal Halide
High Pressure Sodium
OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES
Air Movement Control
Dehumidifiers
Temperature Control
Light Timer
FINAL NOTES
A Message From Simple SelfSufficiency…
Other Titles
Introduction
Imagine growing fresh herbs on the wall of your kitchen. Snip off a couple fresh
basil leaves and throw them right into the pan. More home chefs these days are
growing their own herbs right on their own walls. The end result is dramatically
striking, simply beautiful, and practically useful.
People other than chefs and florists grow their own vegetables and flowers
indoors as well. A sunroom or screened porch are great locations to grow your
own vegetables, herbs or flowers.
Combine the two and you could come home with some fresh mozzarella, pick a
ripe tomato from the plant in your sunroom, snip an aromatic basil leaf off your
kitchen wall, and be enjoying a fresh made, 100% organic, totally pesticide free,
Italian salad in less than a minute. Now imagine doing this in January. That's the
joy of indoor gardening.
Indoor gardening is good for you. Plants are more than just decorations. They
clean the air by filtering out chemicals and producing oxygen. In crowded urban
areas with poor air quality, growing an indoor garden has been shown to notably
reduce indoor pollution. No matter what you grow, as long as you keep your
plants healthy, they'll keep you healthy in return.
Before you rush out to start your indoor garden you need to make one basic
decision. Do you want your garden to spread out or spread up? If you live in an
apartment, you probably want a vertical garden. That's where you turn the wall
opposite the sunniest window in your apartment into a combination art
installation and source of tastiness. Vertical wall gardens are perfect for growing
a diverse collection of small, decorative plants in a confined space.
If you want to grow larger, more substantial plants, you'll need to spread out
instead of up. This means container gardening. A lot of apartments and older
houses have tiny windows. Don't let this stop you from gardening indoors. These
days you can easily transform a spare bedroom or a dusty corner of your
basement into an urban garden oasis.
VERTICAL INDOOR GARDENING
Vertical gardening is simply the art of transforming a blank sunny wall into your
own indoor oasis. Home improvement stores such as Lowes and Home Depot
sell plenty of pre-made vertical planters for your indoor garden. These look like
unusually deep picture frames with spots for multiple photos. Instead of filling
the gaps with photographs, you fill them with small, decorative plants.
This sort of planter is good for small, decorative plants or kitchen herbs. Once in
place they can get pretty heavy, so it's important to make sure you really like the
location before you install a commercially purchased vertical planter.
If you have an exceptionally sunny room you can get ambitious and grow
climbing ivy on trellises. This gives your room the feel of having a half wall or
privacy screen while also being full of greenery. The drawback is planter trellises
are very hard to move. You probably want to experiment with some folding
screens before you commit to a location.
Don't let a fear of commitment get in the way of starting a vertical garden.
There's one completely simple, inexpensive solution you can try today. Pick up a
hanging cloth shoe rack. The shoe pockets happen to be a great size for small
plants. Since the cloth is lightweight you can easily move the hanging shoe rack
to a different location without any fear of destroying your walls or injuring your
plants.
Location
Your eyes can pinpoint a single candle flame at night from over 100 feet away.
We humans like light, but we really don't need very much to thrive. Your plants
aren't so lucky. If you put them more than 12 feet from a window they need
artificial light. Getting artificial lighting into position for a vertical garden is
tricky. Doing it in a way that makes the room look pretty is very hard. It's highly
recommended that you locate your indoor garden on a wall no more than 10 feet
from a window. Pick a spot on the wall that gets as much direct sunlight as
possible.
Mess
Your plants are alive. They're going to shed leaves and flowers. When you water
them, you're likely to get some on yourself, on the wall, and on the floor
beneath. This is one of the main reasons bathrooms and kitchens are such
popular locations for indoor vertical gardens. Indoor gardens and carpet aren't a
good mix. If you want to put a garden in your living room, dining room, or home
office, your first pick should be an area with wood, laminate, linoleum or tile
flooring.
Moss and Lichen
If most people think of moss and lichen at all, they think of ancient, crumbling
ruins, not modern, well decorated apartments. However, moss and lichen are
both very good at growing on vertical surfaces. If you want to make sure there
aren't any odd bare patches in your indoor garden, fill those areas with moss or
lichen. They grow fast, they're easy to maintain, and they add both color and
texture.
Arranging Your Plants
Arranging the plants in your indoor garden really will feel like creating a work
of art. It doesn't matter if you use a vertical garden planter or a cloth shoe rack.
You will want to put your tallest plants near the bottom. That will give them
space to grow up. You'll want to put your bushiest plants near the middle. That
way they're only crowding one another. Don't worry - in nature, bushy plants are
used to crowding one another. You want to put your most delicate plants on the
top and along the outer edges. This gives them the most room to grow.
If you take your plants out of their container you'll find they have a weird shape.
The side facing the wall will be nearly flat and mostly dark brown. The side
facing the light will grow outwards as much as it does upwards. Don't try turning
your plants in order to give both sides equal amounts of light. This doesn't help
them. In fact, it's likely to kill them.
Plants are great at adapting to all kinds of conditions. After all, in the wild they
can't just get up and move to a better location. Instead, they grow towards the
light. This means plants thrive in all kinds of crazy shapes, not just the pretty,
idealized ones you find in a nursery.
Description:People other than chefs and florists grow their own vegetables and flowers indoors as well. A sunroom or screened porch are great locations to grow your own vegetables, herbs or flowers. Just come home with some fresh mozzarella, pick a ripe tomato from the plant in your sunroom, snip an aromatic ba
