Many people view their aerogardens or hydorponic units as novelties. "Isn't it interesting that I can grow lettuce or basil indoors, under artificial conditions..."
But how well does the system perform when you want to rely on it to provide you with nutrition during the long winter when your outdoor garden has been put to bed? I want to find an answer to that overall question and ask a few more along the way.
- Can I grow a winter indoor garden that will significantly supplement my food supply?
- What investment in equipment is required to make an appreciable return?
- what species and variety should be planted and in what garden?
With this goal in mind, we have 4 steps to prepare a indoor homestead garden:
1. What to plant. There are 5 distinct types of plants that should produce well in an indoor garden. In addition, there are specific varieties that work with our hydroponic units
2. What equipment do we need to support the plants. Here we talk about the kinds of indoor hydroponic gardens we can choose from and how many we need.
3. What are we going to do with the produce, once its ready to harvest.
Plant Types
With the indoor hydroponic garden, I like to identify four types of edible plants you can grow. A fifth type is also key to success but its not what you expect.
1. Lettuce grows easily and prolifically in hydroponic systems. It seems like having at least one garden dedicated to a Salad Bar is
always a good investment. If you intend to implement a hydroponic homestead, the easiest place to begin is to grow and eat lots of lettuce. These are reliable and typically trouble free producers.
Plants typically take 30 days to reach productivity, and then may last for another 3 months with regular harvests of the outer leaves. One major benefit is that while lettuce typically doesn't grow well in the summer heat, your indoor garden can grow lettuce year round.
Varieties that work best for me are Little Caesar, Buttercrunch, and Parris Island Cos.
Lettuce will grow well in almost any indoor garden. Ideally, you could use smart system such as a
9-pod Bounty basic, with 4 lettuce plants and two aromatics such as basil or
dill. Lettuce doesn't require very strong lights, so a 20 to 25 watt system would be adequate. Stronger light sources may actually bleach the leaves or burn the tips from excessive heat.
If you need to feed more people, I would replicate this with a
less sophisticated and less expensive system such as the Idoo 12.
After 30 days, I can reliably harvest one main meal salad a week for the next 3 months, accented by a few basil leaves.
2. Sturdy Leafy Greens. These are the plants that add a solid crunch to your stir fries and add volume to your soups. These are greens that need to be cooked before eating but provide a more substantial bite.
Like lettuce, sturdy greens like Bok Choi do well with moderate light and don't like the high brightness of high wattage light systems like the Bounty Elite. You will definitely get bleached and withered leaves, burned leaf edges with too bright a system. Favor systems in the 20 - 30 watt range.
I use Bok Choi varieties : Shanghai Green Choi, Burpee Pak Choi, and Bok Choi Milk.
In addition to bok choi, I also have had success with Purslane, Perpetual Spinach, and Dwarf Siberian Kale as sturdy greens.
After you've got the salad greens unit producing well, it makes sense to add the more substantial greens to a second unit. They may take slightly longer to begin harvesting, 30 - 50 days, and after that plan on a regular harvest every two weeks of the outer leaves.
3. Herbs and Aromatics. These are the plants like basil, dill, cilantro, chives, and parsley that will grow well in an aerogarden but you don't need to plant them for volume as much as for taste. If you've been using a few of these in the salad garden, you may decide you want to use these more frequently in your cooking. These are the plants that will supplement the taste of the salad from your lettuce, and will accent other dishes. You may only need to harvest them a sprig at a time, unless you are making pesto.
Look for Sweet Basil but also consider Piccolino Basil, Dwarf Greek Basil, Spicy Globe Basil.
For other herbs, consider Bouquet Dill, and Arugula Rocket. Obviously, avoid anything with Gigantic or Mammoth or Monstreaux in the variety name.
Aromatics can truly be grown in any size of indoor garden. Basil can grow robustly and easily exceed the garden where it's planted. Dill tends to grow tall and overtop the lights. In both cases, the solution is aggressive harvesting. Herbs will respond to brighter light levels and longer daylength with greater production. However, if you are overloaded with too much basil, shortening the day length will help moderate their growth. The Bounty Basic, with 35 watt lights would be good for this group.
4. Fruiting plants. My fourth category contains plants like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and cucumbers. These have different growing habits and space requirements than the others. In the indoor garden, they may take 90 days to produce edible fruit, but once mature may continue to produce for a long time. With the yellow cherry tomatoes from Aerogarden, I was harvesting at least a half pint every week.
The internet is replete with examples of people growing tomatoes in a 6 pod Harvest but many find greater success in the larger units. Fruiting plants require the highest light levels available, including the Bounty Elite and the Farm units.
At this point you are ready for a larger system that can grow fruit-producing plants, like a Farm12XL With its larger grow deck, bigger reservoir and a full service smart system, you can plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers with confidence of a decent reward. At the least, plan on using the largest indoor garden you have for the fruits, and limit yourself to using one or two pods at the most.
5. Microgreens The final category is not strictly a kind of plant, but it is a category. Microgreens are famous for their fast production and quick turn-around, from planting to harvesting to replanting. Easy and prolific microgreens include Mungo beans and radish seeds. Mungo can be bought at Asian groceries for a few dollars a pound, sprout overnight and are ready to harvest in as early as 4 days.
Indoor Varieties.
As all gardeners are well aware, not all tomatoes are created equal. Some varieties are specifically bread for particular conditions, harvesting patterns, and disease resistance. The same is true for plants in indoor gardens as well. Some lettuce varieties will thrive in the unique conditions of a hydroponic system, while others will remain weak and bolt prematurely. Each of the seeds you choose should be optimized for indoor growing. Generally, dwarf varieties will do much better in hydroponics than others that are bred for outdoor gardens. And specific varieties taste better than others, have better texture and have a better shelf life.
It is the great challenge of the indoor gardener, to be aware of the varieties and make a note of which ones they prefer. For me, Lola Rosa or Silvia lettuce, with their firm texture and green to red color gradient on their large leave makes a perfect aeroponic lettuce. On the other hand, I find the more generic leaf lettuce tends to have a weak, limp texture with small leaves and is prone to bolting.
Orange Hat tomatoes are a dwarf cherry variety that stays small, is a prolific producer, and works well in hydroponic systems. On the other hand, Hybrid Sweet 100s are a sprawling variety that grows well outside when staked, but can be leggy and bland in an indoor system. No amount of heavy pruning will keep these cherry tomatoes well behaved and under control indoors and they will lead to constant frustration and annoyance.
As always, the gardener's journal of the performance of each seed variety will help you make better informed choices each time you sow a new garden bed. The obvious lesson is always: don't keep planting poor performers, in hopes that somehow this time will be different.
Instead, take advice from online sources that have specifically tested their recommendations in indoor gardens. Be diligent in keeping records of the varieties that you do try and record their success. Track their progress throughout the season to know which ones mature faster, produce longer, and taste the best.
The Goal
Our goal here is to go beyond simply having one or two indoor garden units that you view as primarily decorative or ornamental. I assume that, like me, you are already familiar with a unit like the Aerogarden and have experience growing things through their normal life cycle.
Instead, we want to look at what is required to actually create a productive garden with a useful amount of produce. For me, this will require a minimum of four hydroponic units plus one for microgreens. For better productivity, we can expand the plan to use 8 indoor gardens.
These units don't have to be the most sophisticated indoor gardens, either. They can range from the largest AG Farm to the simplest Harvest, from the most customizable Bounty Elite to a plastic shoebox with an airstone. Just as long as it can support plant growth. Many of these systems can be the simple $50 gardens off of Amazon that I call Tier 1 gardens.
Tier 1 Gardens
Let's talk briefly about Tier 1 systems. These are basic units that are little more than a basin, a light, a pump and a timer. These automate many of the basic processes and keep you from having to re-invent the wheel, and without having to break the bank with expensive digital devices. They have names like iDoo, Mufga, Mars Hydro and can range in price from $49 to $100. More expensive ones add other fancy features like a phone app, but we're looking for basic capabilities only. What you get with the Aerogarden name is extensive engineering that makes the extra capabilities worthwhile. Instead, these bare bones units don't try to do much more than provide a growing space.
So if the units are very basic in their function, why not just make your own hydroponic system instead of buying one? It only makes sense if the cost works in your favor. The fact is that hydroponic lights alone cost $30 and up on Amazon. Then you add the basin, the pump, the timers, and the growing medium and you're already over $50. Then you have to spend time tinkering with it to get all the pieces to work together and you're still left with something that looks like a high-school science project. The manufactured units, even the basic ones, bring all these elements together in a discrete and integrated package that is easy to position, monitor, and maintain.
Many manufacturers try to make their product stand out by increasing the pod capacity of the grow deck. Unfortunately, this actually adds very limited value, because they do little more than cram more pods into the same size growing deck. Most units measure about 16" x 8", and offer 9 to 12 pods. Depending on what you're growing, you may only be able to use 4-6 pods for plants to avoid overcrowding and stunted growth. Squeezing 12 or 15 pods in the same sized deck won't allow you to grow more plants, and you simply have more pod spaces standing empty.
Microgreens
In a productive indoor garden, one very prolific component is the garden for microgreens. Microgreens are sprouted seeds that are ready in as little as seven days. Each week, you can have a new harvest of greens to add to salads, stir-frys, rice bowls, and as a topping to many other main meals. A good microgreens unit is not only very prolific, but it also is ready to harvest far sooner than the other units in your indoor garden, and gives you an emotional boost when you are still waiting 90 days for your first tomato.
Microgreen growing units are available on Amazon for as little as $25 and can come in many sizes. You can use specific microgreen seeds to grow for about $15 - $20 a pound. But you can also use the seeds found plentifully on the grocery shelves, including lentils, mungo beans, and black-eyed peas. Most of the beans found in the store will sprout, provided that they are fresh and their package is well sealed. One pound of these seeds sell for $2-3.
Set up of garden beds.
This is what my proposed setup looks like:
A. One of the Bountys is paired with an Idoo 12 tier 1. In these two gardens I grow a salad bar of lettuce and aromatic herbs.
B. In the second Bounty I grow crunchy greens such as Bok Choi. If I had a second unit like this, I would grow another variety of sturdy greens, such as purslane or pereptual spinach.
C. The third Bounty I use for a variety of aromatics and herbs. Classics here are Basil and Dill. More adventurous varieties are Cilantro
D. In the older Ultra, I use for starting seeds to produce transplants. These are both to restock the other indoor gardens when plants begin to bolt, and also as transplant stock for the outdoor garden
E. The Harvest is set up to grow microgreens.
F. I have 2 Farm 12XLs, which together makeup a Farm 24. In this double unit, I will grow a long-term stand of Tomatoes and Peppers. With a bigger garden, I can grow up to 4 each of the tomatoes and peppers. If I only had a regular-sized unit, I would grow just one of each.
For each of these units, we need to have electricity, but more than that, they need to be accessible for maintenance and harvesting. Indoor gardens need regular attention, filling water, adding nutrients, pruning, harvesting. An indoor garden where it is too much bother to check the water level or add nutrients is one that is in real danger of failing.
Each garden also needs regular supplies, including baskets, grow sponges, domes and stickers; they further need nutrients designed for their particular type.
Harvest
This may not seem obvious but the point at which many gardens fail when its time to take in the harvest. Unharvested lettuce is quicker to bolt. Unpicked tomatoes cause the whole plant to slow down. Overgrown leafy greens rub against each other, blocking light and airflow, leading to sad or diseased plants.The other danger is when plants grow too tall, and end up pressing against the light. Their leaves are bleached, or they grow around the light and end up leggy and weak.
The cure for this is regular harvesting. These gardens are typically harvested in a "cut and come again" style. Instead of cutting the whole lettuce plant, you take the outer 2 leaves from each of the plants in the row. This keeps all the plants growing strongly, because none of them takes a big hit, and it also increases the space between them, improving air flow and light to all the plants.
Cook What you Grow
In order to be regularly harvesting the produce of the garden, you need to have a way to make use of that produce. There's no point in growing a whole bed of tatsoi if you never cook with it. So a key part of the indoor homesteading plan is to assemble menus that use the delicious ingredients you are growing.
This may mean that you actively research recipes for perpetual spinach, or bok choi. You should have your favorite salad dressing on hand, so that you are always ready to enjoy your harvest of lettuce, basil, and cherry tomatoes. And you have contingency plans in place: What do you do when you have too much basil? Pesto. An abundance of purslane? Chimichurri
But the idea is not enough. You need to have a go-to recipe for basil pesto that you enjoy and that always works. And you need to have a regular recipe in the rotation that uses your sturdy greens like broccoli rabe or spinach. In order to reach your goal of a homestead that sustains you, this is the information you need to put in place up front, before anything gets started.
Ready to Begin
At this point, you have identified the hydroponic systems you are going to use, and have located at least 5 of them. Each of these has been given a specific role to play in this ecosystem.
Second, you have identified the types of plants you are going to use, from the four categories. And more particularly, you have identified the varieties you need and procured the seeds to plant.
Third, you have identified locations for each of these garden units and have provided supplies for germinating the seeds and feeding them with nutrition.
Fourth, you have prepared menus and recipes that will make good use of the produce you are about to create.
Finally, you have secured a journal where you will record the progress, successes and failures of each of these crops, so you can learn from them in the future.
Next, with all our preparation in place, we will actually begin all the indoor garden units and get a feel for what will be required for the success of our garden.
