Food! Clean eating is extremely important to me and has been for some time. Recently I’ve been reading about the health benefits of a plant based diet so I’m starting to move in that direction. There are challenges, of course. Change is hard. One of my primary challenges is accessibility to clean produce with no chemicals or pesticides. It’s a 50 minute drive to the nearest organic grocer. The obvious solution is to grow my own food…right? We live in the Midwest, inside city limits of a small town, and we have a nice sized yard. I’ve looked into raised garden beds, but I’m hesitant to destroy even a small section of my husband’s prized lawn unless I’m certain I can commit to and have success nurturing a raised bed garden. And installing raised beds would potentially provide me with fresh, clean produce during the summer…but what about the rest of the year?
Indoor hydroponic gardening to the rescue!
I first learned about hydroponic gardens during a family get together. My sister showed up with a gorgeous head of lettuce that she had purchased from a grocery store. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I started asking questions, and learned that a friend of hers actually has a hydroponic garden in her kitchen! WHAT? Why had I never heard of this?
I took to the internet. I was enticed by the idea of having fresh produce year round in my own kitchen. I researched a few of the top indoor gardens, read reviews, compared prices, and read articles about the differences between hydroponic and soil grown produce. After about one month of research, I purchased my own garden!
So how does it work? Hydroponic gardens are water-only gardens (hence the term hydroponic). There is no soil. My particular garden (The Rise Garden) has a water tank and a pump that constantly circulates water through both levels. The base unit is single level and you can purchase one or two additional levels or tiers to make a double or triple level garden. I purchased the base unit plus one additional tier. I purchase seed pods and nutrients directly from the company, and I follow the app for feeding instructions. It tells me exactly when and how much of which nutrients to add.
The garden needs to be completely cleaned out and all plants harvested every three to five months. I’ve been through that process once now and it isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. The hardest part is harvesting plants that are still producing and mass drying all the herbs.
My first indoor planting and harvesting season taught me a lot. I learned which plants thrive inside and which really need to be moved outside once they have sprouted and have a solid root system. I also learned that the amount of lettuce I had planted was not able to keep up with my personal consumption needs.
I’m currently in my second planting season (after having cleaned out and harvesting the entire garden as mentioned above). I have 11 different kinds of lettuces growing, I doubled up on kale, I have four different kinds of herbs growing (cilantro, rosemary, parsley, basil), and I’m trying out some strawberries. It’s springtime so I started tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers indoors then moved them outside, hoping they will do better in soil.
The photo above shows my garden after 6 weeks. Now…I can’t keep up with my lettuce! I’m so happy with the production of the lettuce varieties and my kale is doing much better this time! I absolutely love filling my lunch plate every day with a few leaves clipped from each plant.
For me, indoor gardening is a game changer. It allows me to grow fresh greens year round and I feel great knowing they are not getting sprayed with pesticides. Lunch is literally a matter of snipping a few leaves, putting them on a plate, and adding some seeds, cucumber, and tomato purchased from the grocery store. Hopefully soon my outdoor cucumber and tomato plants will start producing and I won’t even have to purchase those!
Indoor gardening feels clean, fresh, healthy, and empowering!
