Practically off the grid!

The environmental cost of importing food to Canada throughout the winter months is enormous.  This habit of ours wastes valuable energy for transportation and storage and often takes advantage of less wealthy economies around the world.  Ideally, I hope to eventually be able to grow a yearly supply of food in the summer and store it carefully for the winter but until I acquire sufficient land for the purpose and build a root cellar I will be experimenting with some indoor gardening to help decrease my dependance on imported food in the winter.  

The basic equipment you will need to find will include artificial lighting, containers for your plants, and possibly reflective walls to enclose your garden area.  The introduction of LED lights to the grow light market excited me and was part of my motivation for this experiment.  LED grow lights use dramatically less energy than high pressure sodium and metal halide lamps and even cost less.  The lower energy demand of LED lights also means they are cooler and cheaper to operate.  I found a 90 watt UFO LED grow light for about $150 on ebay.  It uses a red and blue spectrum light to enhance plant growth and will cover a grow area of 12 square feet.  I controlled the light with a simple plug in timer available at most hardware stores.  For my growing containers I chose to reuse some 5 gallon buckets which can generally be acquired for free if you ask around.  I made these containers self watering by adding an upside down perforated 1 gallon pail in the bottom of the bucket for a water storage reservoir and a filling tube that extends from the pail beyond the soil surface.  Lastly, to keep all of this red light from the rest of my house I built a wood frame to enclose this grow area and walled it with reflective foil.  This reflective foil will not only prevent the light from getting out but also reflect it back towards the plants.  So that is all there was for the setup: a grow light, timer, 12 self watering containers, and a reflective enclosure.

Once I had all of the equipment ready to go I began seeding.  For potting soil, I first used a mixture of sand ( 2 parts),  garden soil (4 parts), peat moss (4 parts) and worm castings (1 part).  Later in the winter, when the outdoor soil was frozen, I switched to standard commercial potting soil enriched with worm castings.  I wanted to learn what would grow best in my indoor garden so I started by planting a variety of seeds.  The list included, oregano, mint, basil, parsley, cilantro, leaf lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers.  A couple of these plants were not started from seed.  The oregano was transplanted from outside and the other herbs were purchased from a local greenhouse.  They adapted to the new growing environment rather well.  I even brought in a tomato from outside that eventually produced fruit.  

LED grow light in action

indoor garden under white light

I did learn a few things in this first winter growing season.  First, the low energy demand of this LED grow light actually makes indoor gardening an economical choice.  It costs only $3.00 a month to run and if I manage my space well, I can easily grow $3.00 worth of food.  Next, not everything I planted thrived in the indoor environment.  Spinach and swiss chard came out on top by far.  I chose perpetual varieties that allowed me to harvest the same plant repeatedly and this reduced down time in my garden that would habe been required for new plants to grow.  The herbs also performed quite well but I found I did not use them as fast as they could grow so I eventually replaced them with more greens for salads.  The tomatoes and peppers did produce but their fruits were small.  Cucumbers probably fall in last place here as they failed to yield anything.  They flowered easily and small cucumbers set on but never developed further.  The leaves became spotty and eventually dried up before the plant could produce anything of value.  The number of hours of light you provide your indoor plants is another variable.  I played around with this a bit but did not record any measurable data.  My timer was generally set to turn the LED grow light on for 14 hours a day.  The speed of growth with this setup described was noticeably slower than winter greenhouse operations I have been a part of.  However, it is much cheaper to operate.  I may be able to accelerate plant growth by reducing my growing area and thereby increasing the light intensity but that experiment will have to wait for the next winter season.  

Based on the success of this first winter growing season for my indoor garden I plan to continue the experiment next year.  I will try some new plants and strategies but certainly keep the spinach and swiss chard in the mix as they have proven to be dependable producers for me this year.  Now it is time to get outside and start another season of work in the real garden.