00:00Six ideas for easy indoor veg gardens. This is Kim Stoddart, an award-winning
00:07environmental journalist from the UK, here with you for gardening know-how.
00:12I am so excited by the possibilities of growing food and even flowers during the colder months
00:20of the year and just because the outside garden has started to slow down and slumber, it doesn't
00:28mean that the indoor growing opportunities have to stop, quite the opposite in fact.
00:34So why create indoor veg gardens? Well there are so so many reasons for doing so. For one, the sheer
00:43joy and enjoyment of taking seed and germinating the seed into plants, into food that you can bring
00:52to the table is, as we all know as keen gardeners, absolutely fantastic thing to do. It feels so
00:59incredibly good and that doesn't have to stop. There are lots of opportunities to make the best use of
01:07windowsills, tables, vases, items that you might have lying around, old seed packets, and to turn
01:15them into food that you can still enjoy and bring to the table. So there are lots and lots of
01:21different
01:21ways to go about it. I'm going to share some ideas with you in this video.
01:26First of all, let's look at lovely, lovely lettuce. What a taste of summer. The ability to pick
01:34lovely fresh leaves from from plants to bring to the table as well. It doesn't really get much better
01:41than that and the great news is that in a very very small indoor space, in a small pot container,
01:48you can grow an awful lot of pick and come again lettuce. So the key is to go for lettuce
01:55varieties
01:56such as this, which is a loose leaf lettuce variety, which lends itself really well to repeat pickings.
02:04And the key is to just keep picking, just keep allowing space and then the more you pick, the more
02:13you cut and come again, the more that you have the opportunity to tap into this fantastic homegrown
02:18delight over winter. Secondly, we have cilantro, which is such an amazing taste of summer. We have to say,
02:27beautiful, beautiful, zesty, lovely fresh leaves. And again, this is perfectly feasible to grow indoors.
02:34The key with this is to keep plants quite young, again, for the cut and come again opportunities.
02:43Ideally, you can, the plant itself can grow in colder conditions, but if you're growing inside,
02:50you're more inclined to have a lot more opportunity to enjoy this lovely zesty leaf.
02:56I mix plants, which I'll talk about in a bit, but this leaf lends itself incredibly well,
03:01mixed in with other different types of edible produce. And the, you can just brush the leaves
03:07as well to release the lovely zesty scent, even if you're not actually picking it to eat, which is
03:12fantastic. Argula is another fantastic, very resilient, reliable type of leaf to grow also. And
03:21with this, you can, you can grow this in most different sizes of container. It does grow quite
03:28quickly indoors as well in this way. So as I'll show you in a minute, you just need to keep
03:35an eye
03:36on the plant itself. And as soon as things like the leaves start yellowing, then you know that it's
03:42time to, to plant it on, maybe give it some more compost, give it a bigger space in which to
03:47grow.
03:47And come the following spring, it can also be planted outside as well, because it will carry on
03:54growing. It's a lovely, very, very resilient leaf. And I think an important part of a salad mix as
04:01well, because it tastes so delicious. Parsley is another indoor herb that I would highly recommend
04:07growing. It can grow still outside, but it will put on very slow growth. So if you have some growing
04:14inside, then it will keep on producing. And the leaves are absolutely packed full of vitamin C. It's
04:23added to a range of really, really exciting dishes. There's different ways to get started with the
04:29growing of parsley. You might want to try one of the supermarket herb pots and just plant it out into
04:36a bowl with a lot more multi-purpose compost as well. So the plant has room to spread. Or you
04:43might
04:43want to take one of your plants from outside and bring it in. Or alternatively, you could have a look
04:48at germinating some of the seed as well for small pickings to begin with that can then grow on and
04:55then be planted outside. Do know also that parsley is very, very easy to save seed from. So if you
05:03are
05:03working with a plant over winter, highly recommend them planting it out as a biennial. In its second year,
05:11it will then flower and set seed and you get lots of lovely plants for free, which is absolutely brilliant.
05:16Another great plant for windowsill growing has to be the beautiful pea, pea shoots. So peas for pea shoots.
05:25So also very, very easy to grow. It's the type of seed that you might well have lying around anyway.
05:32You might have some dried peas in your store cupboard and these can all be used, germinated,
05:38to create these absolutely fantastic baby plants that can then be picked, picked when they're a couple of
05:45inches tall as well. So they can carry on growing for repeat pickings and they are amazing added to
05:52dishes. You can add them to salads, you can also add them to decorate food as well to create a
05:58meal to
05:58really impress. Micro greens are also incredibly easy to do and you can work with seed that you might
06:05already have left over from earlier on in the year. So with the the micro greens, as the name suggests,
06:12these are very, very small leaves. So you just sow seed quite thickly in a small container. You only
06:19need a very shallow amount of compost and then when they produce their first two leaves, true two leaves,
06:25they're ready to pick. What I would also recommend as well is growing some of your greens in a way
06:31that
06:31enables you to pick the larger leaves as well. Now this is a Swiss chard plant here, as you can
06:38see,
06:38and it lends itself very, very well to larger container planting. You can mix plant in a container,
06:46you can take all your favourite types of leaves, your herbs and you can plant them quite densely
06:52together as well to make the best use of space. As your plant continues to grow, if you see the
06:58leaves
06:58starting to yellow, if it doesn't look healthy then what you then want to do is actually have a look
07:04as well. So you can see here that the roots are starting to grow through, which is a surefire indicator
07:10that this plant needs a bigger container in which to grow. If they get too big, you could always plant
07:16them outside for next year. They will grow on, they will still produce come spring. It's a really good way
07:23of getting extra edibles come the quieter months of the year on the vegetable garden outside. And you can
07:30also, other ideas, you can also look at some baby roots. So the likes of carrot lend themselves very,
07:38very well actually to indoor planters. Sown quite thickly, you won't get full-sized carrots obviously,
07:44but you will get in a deep container baby carrots which are an absolute joy to harvest over the winter
07:50months. Very exciting thing to do. Let's take some of the carrot here. Now carrot roots are very delicate,
07:59so you do have to be careful when planting these out. So I'm not going to separate them,
08:04I'm going to plant them all together. And you can see there's some roots there at the bottom,
08:08so I'm going to be very careful and plant these together in a clump, which will be absolutely fine.
08:14And that will minimise any root disturbance, which will enable the delicious baby carrots to grow.
08:20They don't take up a lot of space. Also you can look at flowers. So this is an old cup
08:28that was broken.
08:29You can see it was dropped and broken. So this then became an impromptu planter. And you can get
08:36really creative with different types of planter, which is a really good way of taking a waste item
08:42and turning it into something new. So recycling, upcycling, it feels really good to turn an item
08:51that would otherwise go into landfill to something you can grow food in. And flowers work really well.
08:58They can bring a smile to the face over winter. And have a look, have a look in your cupboard,
09:03see what materials you can find to potentially plant in. It could be an old vase, it could be
09:08an old Wellington boot. There's all sorts of different ways that you can create planters.
09:14Another creative growing project idea as well, is if you have any tomato plants still going,
09:20you can take some of the side shoots and you can grow them as house plants over winter.
09:26You won't obviously get to pick tomatoes, but certainly you can release the lovely smell,
09:32lovely scent of the tomato, which is such a joyful thing to do over the cold months of the year.
09:37And come the following year as well, your plant can then grow on and produce.
09:41It's just a nice way of bringing the outside in over the winter months.
09:52Over winter, your plants won't need as much watering as they would do during the cooler months of the
09:57year. So the best way of checking if they need water, is to actually use your fingers and to put
10:03them say an inch down into the compost, just to check whether the moisture levels are too much
10:11or too little. Because if your plants are too dry, that's going to cause an issue. If they're too wet,
10:16then the roots can actually rot. So you need to be careful with the balance. By looking at the plants,
10:22that's also a really good indicator of how they are. If the leaves are looking lush and healthy,
10:27as soon as they start to yellow, or if you can see there's any issues with the quality of the
10:33leaf, then that's time to actually have a look. And if the plant is looking too big,
10:39if roots are coming out, you can then take that and plant it on. In terms of where to place
10:44your
10:44planter as well, make use of available space by a window. It could be a bit drafty, but also it
10:52can
10:52maximise light. You could use, if you're planting in a vase or in this case an old cup, you could
10:58always
10:59use that as a table display. There's all sorts of ways of doing it. Work to your home, work to
11:06your
11:06personal preferences, and turn this into a fun, nurturing indoor project over winter. If you have
11:14any issues with flies, which can be a challenge sometimes with indoor planters, there are various
11:20ways to go about this organically. But arguably the best thing to do is to remove the top roughly
11:26two inches of compost. Put your plants outside, remove the two inches of compost, replace fresh
11:32multi-purpose compost, and then that should be absolutely fine. Mixed planting also helps as well
11:38anyway, because it helps to avoid any buildup of pestle disease as well, and it makes it harder for
11:44that to spread. But there are many, many different ways to create these indoor gardens, and it's incredibly
11:50fun doing so. It brings warmth to the gardener in the home to have these amazing, lovely pick-and-come
11:58-again
11:58leaves and produce fresh to hand. It's absolutely magic.
12:02So, I'm going to take a look at the gardener in the back of the gardener in the back.
