How to Grow an Indoor Survival Garden

Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to grow greens and fresh vegetables inside of your home? I'm growing lettuce and greens tomatoes and cucumbers and even peppers inside of mine. I'm Kyleen, the Provident Prepper. September is National Preparedness Month and we have been invited to participate in a collaboration with several other fantastic preppers and produce a video for every day during the month of September to help you with your preparedness efforts. This video is on indoor gardening because being able to grow some of your own food is incredibly important in a survival situation. Many of our friends have talked about how they don't have space to grow anything because they live in an apartment or there are restrictions in the a closet, a spare room, or even just a wall in your family room to be able to grow fresh greens for your family. In this video we will share with you the progress that we are making as we discover the benefits of growing indoors and share with you some of the challenges and hopefully you'll be able to avoid some of them yourself. So come with us and see our garden. I'd like to begin by giving a shout out to all of these fantastic YouTube preppers that are trying to provide us with 30 days of videos to help all of us become a little bit better prepared. So make sure that you go and check those out. Why would I want to have an indoor survival garden? Well I don't have the resources at this point to be able to build my dream greenhouse and yet all around me I see evidence of the need to increase my food security and my self-reliance and this is a great way to do it. The goal of my survival garden is to supplement my basic food storage. The intent of my basic food storage is to provide the basic ingredients that I need to make things like bread and rice and beans and to provide those base calories to ensure that we don't go hungry. When Jonathan and I were discussing the goals for our indoor garden we decided that my goal is to be able to make this sandwich for my son every day of the year. I make some really good hoagie rolls and with the ingredients that we have stored like pickles and olives and a few things like that along with fresh foods that I can grow in my survival garden we can eat this sandwich year round without ever leaving our home. I produced a video a few weeks ago about how we were growing greens inside and then when I set this new goal I realized that I was missing some things in that what I had in place just wasn't adequate for what I want to do because I want to be able to grow cherry tomatoes year round. I don't think it's realistic for me to try and grow regular tomatoes but cherry tomatoes are definitely easy to grow indoors and I can do that. These are my favorite sun sugar cherry tomatoes. We took clippings off these tomato plants and started them so that I can have these exact tomatoes growing in my indoor garden. Cucumbers are another great vegetable to grow in an indoor garden. I did the same thing that I did with the tomatoes. We took cuttings off these Armenian cucumber plants and started them but in addition there's another smaller cucumber that I wanted to try also and we started some of those from seed. In that photo that's on the left hand corner you'll see that I've got these starts growing in a basket and the idea is that they're just in front of this sunny window and they don't have supplemental light. We'll see how well they do. Peppers are another vegetable that I'd really like to be able to grow successfully in our indoor garden and of course lettuce and greens are a huge part of the crop that I would like to produce in my indoor garden. And finally I want to be able to grow culinary herbs in my indoor garden because they can take basic food storage and turn it into something spectacular. So with those goals in mind expansion was required because I started out with just this one shelf and it just wasn't going to do the trick so we ordered another one but there was a mistake and Home Depot shipped us two of them and once we had it I just couldn't send it back so we ended up having to pay for both of them. But that meant that I had three shelves to grow food on and I think that for me that just might be adequate as long as I have some other things hanging from the ceiling. So I'm incredibly excited about how this is going to work and Jonathan's been a really good sport because he's my handyman and he makes all of this possible. I went to the dollar store and almost cleaned them out of the dish pans. I did leave a couple for somebody else because I felt really bad about just wiping them all out. If money weren't an object I would use the trays that bus boys use to clear the table at restaurants but they are just out of my price range. But I think that they would work really really well in this type of a setup if you're not limited financially. While we've got that expansion going on let's talk about the benefits of an indoor garden. First of all it is possible to produce a lot of food in a very small space especially when you're using the shelving because that way you can go up vertical. You can also hang plants from the ceiling which utilizes space that normally would just be empty. You can grow food almost anywhere. You can do it in a garage, in a closet, in an empty space against your wall. It doesn't really matter. It would be optimal if you had some really good south facing windows that had a lot of sun coming in but that's not realistic for a lot of us. Another benefit is there's no weeding. It is simple to control the insects and you're in a protected environment. I don't have to worry about grasshoppers or chickens destroying things or deer or different animals destroying my crop. Also there's a higher level of security so that you can grow your food without some passers-by knowing what you have and harvesting it for themselves. And for me the biggest benefit of my indoor garden is it's therapeutic. I find great beauty and peace in my indoor garden as well as my outdoor garden. There are definitely some disadvantages to an indoor garden. One there's limited space. You're not going to be able to grow things like corn or melons or winter squash. It's just not happening. It is an artificial environment which means that it will not work as well as mother nature. But you also don't have the variability that comes with mother nature either. Sustainability is also an issue. I really like to grow food using permaculture principles and do things like a food forest where nature just works and a lot of it just takes care of itself. That's not possible in an indoor garden. It requires constant attention. You will need to water it regularly and make sure that all these plants are doing well. And then you get these little greenhouse bugs. There's little flies. And so I'm trying to learn how to manage those. And as I do that we will create another video on that because I think that's really important. With that out of the way let's talk about the basics of indoor gardening. Isn't that pretty? And you know what? This is just the beginning. This is just a month or so old. So we we've got a long way to go. Number one, plants need light. Whether it's natural light or artificial light, plants need light. If you click the card in the corner it will take you up to a post that we have written about starting seedlings indoors. And we talk about the exact specifications that you need for your lights. We use inexpensive shop lights and fluorescent lights. John is experimenting right now with some led lights for me. They're more expensive. They're less expensive to operate. But basically plants need light. The roots of the plants need room to grow. This is a really interesting thing that we learned when I first started growing greens. If you look at the plant in that cup there, that is one single lettuce plant. It was planted at exactly the same time as the lettuce in the tub. Inside that tub there are five different plants and we transplanted them all at the same time. However the lettuce in the tub is significantly larger than the lettuce in the cup. And the only difference is that the lettuce in the cup has restrictions on its roots. I would just make sure that your pot is plenty large enough to accommodate the roots. You want to provide good drainage because plants don't like soggy feet. Using the two dish pans has worked really well. We drill holes in one of them and then we put wood or something to elevate that first dish pan just a little bit so that there is a place for the water to go and that second dish pan captures it so it doesn't make a mess. Temperature is also a consideration. Depending on the plant it will only germinate at certain temperature ranges and some plants like to grow warmer or cooler than others. So just really be aware of the temperature. Most of the time the temperature that's in your house will be very good for growing plants. In this photo you'll see how I grow those little seedlings. I plant them in the cup and then I will as soon as they're big enough I divide them and plant them in the larger tub where they're separated and the roots have a little bit more space to grow. It is important that you move air wherever it is that you are growing your plants. You can do that by leaving windows open and letting that natural air flow come through or using a fan. Sometimes I actually use both. In the winter time I'm going to have to close that up and the only kind of air movement that they're going to get is the fan. But it is important that you move that air for good healthy plants. And because they are in these little pots you will need to fertilize regularly. This is fish fertilizer and it's really funny because it's hard for me to take pictures while I'm doing things. So Ben had to be my hand model right? And so he's pouring this fish fertilizer in there and he just about died. He had to cover his nose. So you don't have to use fish fertilizer. I have some other fertilizers too but I do recommend that you use an organic fertilizer that was intended for edible crops. And a basic principle for higher production is to harvest often. The more that you harvest, the more that that plant says, oh I need to keep producing. Now you can't harvest too much. With the greens I only harvest about a third of the plant at a time and then they just keep growing and producing really well. Most of these plants are just annual plants and they have a life and once that life is exhausted they're not going to produce well for you anymore. So it's important that you continually plant new plants and keep that succession going. Now I talked a little bit about how sustainability is a problem with an indoor garden. And so let's talk about ways that we can increase the sustainability of your garden. The picture that you see here is actually an apple tree guild. And in this guild or this grouping of trees, I have created this self-sustaining guild where we have certain plants that attract pollinators, that attract good bugs, and that repel bad bugs, and the soil all works together and feeds each other. It's just a really good system. And we can't do that in an indoor garden but we can do a few things to make it more sustainable. The first one is to plant some perennials. Perennials are great. They're plants that just continue to grow year after year. And this is my first time trying a Malabar spinach. It is a perennial spinach plant and it can be grown as a house plant. It's vining and it will grow up and I'm really excited to see how well this does. A lot of the herbs that we are growing are perennials such as the peppermint and the oregano and the thyme. A lot of those are perennials and that's a really good option for an indoor garden. Now as far as sustainability goes, if you have a power outage and you are dependent on those lights, you have a problem. Now your plants can go for a week without lights and they're not going to all die. And depending on how long the power outage is, you might need to plan for another option. That's Jonathan's job. He's working on my backup power. Another option that you have is to take your plants out every day when the weather is good and then bring them back in at night so that they can at least get some sunshine. You do have to be careful because these plants are not acclimated to that direct harsh sun so you might need to just put them in the shade for a little while until they are acclimated. But really plan on that. Think about what am I going to do if my power goes out. With indoor gardening, usually we do not reuse the potting soil because in nature it has all kinds of great ways to take care of things and it all works together. But it doesn't work that way in your indoor garden. This is a really good story. I went to Walmart and out in front of Walmart they had all these bags of garden soil for only three dollars each. They're normally 12 or 13 dollars and this is exactly what I need. It's organic garden mix. So I was really excited and I just stocked up on a whole bunch. Right now when I rotate through my plants the soil that was in that container is either put in the compost pile, the worm bin, or it is planted in my garden. I don't throw it away at all. It's always reused but I don't reuse it in the indoor garden. If you do need to do that because resources are tight you'll need to investigate how to heat that so that you sterilize the soil and make it safe to use again. Seed saving is also another problem because when a plant goes to seed, especially with the greens, the leaves are really bitter and you just don't want to be eating them. But that plant is going to take up a lot of space and I don't want that happening inside because it's just too much space. These are all lettuces that were growing in my indoor garden and that started to go to seed. So I took them and transferred them out into my regular garden where they can go to seed and I can harvest those seeds without any issues. Another problem with seed saving is that sometimes the plant that is produced will not be the same as the parent plant if it's a hybrid seed. Another way to be more sustainable is through plant propagation. These are Armenian cucumbers that I was growing in the garden and we just took cuttings off of them. So we cloned them or did cuttings and we put them in this water and let them root out and then we planted them into these pots. As you can see they are doing really really well and I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses. We'll keep you updated on it. We also did that with the tomato plants and with some peppers. This all boils down to having the ability to produce nutritionally dense foods inside of my home so that I don't have to go to the store. Whether it's because the store doesn't have the supplies that I need, because it's dangerous to go to the store, or I don't have the funds to buy the food. This is a great way to make sure that I have the foods that I need to keep my family healthy. So what's your goal? You do not have to be as ambitious as I am. I am so excited about this and I am thrilled to be able to see what all this looks like six months from now and to be able to look out the window and see the snow-covered ground as I have cherry tomatoes growing inside. But that doesn't have to be your goal. Your goal could be one pot that has that Malabar spinach in it and you're just growing it as a house plant. I encourage you to start small, to be realistic about your lifestyle and what you can do and what your budget can allow, and to have fun. Because for me, I love to grow things. There's something incredibly satisfying about serving up a meal where you have produced a significant portion of the food that is being eaten at that meal. If you'd like to know more, visit the Provident Prepper, How to Grow an Indoor Survival Garden. And on YouTube, we have a video, Fresh Greens Every Day for Pennies. This video focuses on exactly how to grow the greens, but not some of the other things. And then, inexpensive grow lights. This is where it all started and I got addicted to indoor gardening. Because originally, I just wanted to get a jump on the season because I was really worried about what was going to happen this year and whether or not I was actually going to be able to go to the nursery and pick up plants. And I've done it so many other ways, but this was really fun and I am completely sold on this inexpensive grow light system because really, you can fit it into your budget. Thank you for all of your support. I hope that you watch this, you read this, and that you start growing something in your own home. If I can do this, you can do this. And like with everything in prepping, there's an inexpensive way to accomplish something and a more expensive way. We tend to choose the less expensive way because it fits better within our budget. And now for the question of the day. What experience do you have growing edible foods indoors and what can you teach us about it? Comment below and thanks for being part of the solution.