Mistletoe Cactus Tufa Baske

And Again! My Indoor Garden

I always tell myself “Don’t do it!”

Here is Ohio in zone 6, we have cold winters where it dips into temperatures below freezing for weeks and weeks, even months, at a time. So I cannot leave any tender succulents outside unless I am willing to give them up….or just allow them to die in winter. So whether I want to or not, I have to have an indoor garden.

MyIndoorGardenfromthehypertufagardener

However, even though I try and resist the impulse, I end up with more tender succulents, or the ones I had last winter have grown so much that I just cannot let them go. So we go ahead and set up the shelves for my indoor garden.

IndoorGardenFlypaperRibbon

Several years ago, my husband had made a set of wooden shelves with the hardware attached so that I could hang the four foot shop lights for my plants. We had originally used it to try and grow seedlings, but I just didn’t like that operation. I discovered the winter sowing method, and I have gone that way ever since.

But since we have an extra room downstairs in the basement which I can use as a plant room, that is  where I have everything set up now. It is a storage room for Christmas decorations, trees, miniature Christmas villages, wreaths and garlands….packed in like sardines. So my plants are in there and getting light as well as they can. Do you have an indoor garden?

There is the overhead light and also two shop lights. I don’t use the special grow lights. I haven’t seen the difference one way or the other for the increased expense of those lights, so I will just use the regular florescent tubes.

And the plants have grown from last year (most of them) and so I have just put them back down there again to see if they will survive. In the spring after it warms up considerably, I will put them back outside.

My opinion is that the plants do so well outside that I don’t want to deprive them of the outdoor “vacation.”  I have not had a fungus gnat problem inside this fall. I used my technique as outlined in this post, and I have also put up the fly-paper curly ribbons. There are some little bodies stuck there, but since the adult gnats get stuck, the gnats don’t create more larvae , so issue is over !

DrapedHypertufaIndoorGarden

I have my draped hypertufa with the asparagus fern and geraniums down here also. This fern has survived for several years so I don’t think there will be a problem this year.  The hanging tufa pot with the mistletoe cactus is here at the top of the page. That plant is getting so large! He will need to be divided next spring for sure.

So do you bring in a lot of plants to over-winter?  I am glad I have the area in the basement because of the steady temperatures down there. How do you over winter your plants?

MotherofThousands

 

4 Comments

  1. Growing indoor is the one of the best option we have where we can control everything, We have the control over the environment as well!

    By growing indoor we can get the best output!

    Informative article it is!

    Thank you!

    1. I like a few plants indoors, so I am putting them into terrariums mostly these days.

  2. I live in Eastern Washington and faced the same dilemma. In the end, though, I’ve come to prefer growing indoors, since you have complete control over the environment. Even the lighting actually becomes an advantage, if you have a good grow light. My results are way better in my basement than they ever were outside!

    1. Agree with Steven,
      Control plus you get more room for experiments and could stick with a technique that yield you the best results.
      Though I’m growing in a separate room I have in my house, with an apollo tent.

      It Was a good read Kim.

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