Easy Tips to Build an Indoor Vegetable or Herbs Garden
Many of us love fresh vegetables just picked from the branches, and to add fresh herbs to our favorite food recipes. If we live in a house with a big enough backyard where we can grow our vegetables and herbs, we will be able to have access to a whole world of freshness, flavor and health.
But haven't a backyard is not a reason for don't enjoy fresh vegetables and herbs. We can have our very own vegetables and herbs gardens inside our house, the only things we will need are appropriate plant pots or containers and lots of love and care for our green babies.
The first step to create a nice indoor vegetable garden is to decide the best spot in our house where to place it. Vegetables need lots of sun light, so is obvious that we will need to find a place close to a window. The morning sun is the best one, and we will need same shade for the warm seasons. We can find a window that receives sunlight enough and is not in the middle of all the traffic in the house. We can place a table underneath it, to support our vegetables plants, or even build a window support with some wood and cover it with a nice fabric. If we have a balcony, we can use it as well, or we can install a plant pot that hung out the window.
For our indoor herb garden, we should have a place four the plants in the room where we will use them the most, the kitchen. The ideal spot is under the kitchen window, some people install a wooden shelf over the sink, to have better and faster access to their herbs while they are cooking.
The second step is to choose the containers. Here we can be creative, because we can use regular plant plastic containers, ceramic pots or anything that can hold a plant. For the herbs in the kitchen we can use old cooking utensils, as old cooking pots or servers, if we are sure they are water leaks proof and we drill a hole underneath them to allow drainage. I have my tomatoes plants in big plastic plant pots that bought in a dollar store for one dollar each, and my herbs in cute vintage cans.
Next we must purchase a mix of potting soil and gardening soil, and fill our containers. We can buy vegetables seeds or seedlings, to plant. There are very nice quality dwarf types of vegetables plants that are very convenient to have in an indoor vegetable garden, they are very tasty veggies and we can place them in a small spot in our home. We can choose dwarf types of broccoli, cabbage or some of the strange but full of flavor Asian mini vegetables. We can plant jalapeno peppers and cherry tomatoes, and grow mini pumpkins for Halloween.
We must remember to fertilize our vegetables each couple of weeks. We can buy a commercial fertilizer, but also we can use many things we have in the house to feed our plants, as egg shells, fruit and vegetables peels, or even the lint of our clothes dryer.
It is important to keep cutting the leaves from our herbs' plants, to have them green and strong. When my basil gets to big, I put the pot in my bunnies' cage, and they give it a nice "hair cut". I do the same with my dill, cilantro, parsley, thyme or rosemary, so my herbs look and taste fabulous.
And you can make beautiful and original gifts in the Holiday season, if you buy little cute bottles or containers, fill them with some dry herbs and glue a tag with the herb's name painted by you or your child. I am learning how to mix herbs with olive oil to make fantastic flavor's oils little bottles, they are good for cooking and they make beautiful and personal gifts.
Growing vegetables and herbs at home can give us many good things, and they only ask for some soil, water and food, and lots of sun and love.
