I am working on a way to make the set up of my indoor garden look nice. We do not have a basement or spare bedroom to put the garden in, so it is in the downstair room that is right next to the front door. It has big french doors that are easier to just leave open than close them. Small room and a tight fit with the furniture! It is also my painting studio, so it can get cluttered with paints and canvases! Such a hard room to keep looking organized!
I have taken over a corner of the room for the plants. Since, this is something people can see, I want it to look nice and interesting. I have not yet truly achieved this. I have been putting the garden together piece-meal as I did not want to sink a ton of money into this project unless I thought it would eventually pay off. I do find myself wanting to buy a lot of fun stuff for this! So-trying-to-hold-back!
I have some string lining part of the wall for the plants to grow up. I think I will change this out later for fishing line. I think it would be really pretty but also a useful to design this like a living wall. I could then, hide some of the plants behind the couch, and they could grow up the walls. I think that is more of a future plan than one to tackle right now. Currently, I am just going to do a living wall in the corner. The cucumbers and winter squash are currently growing up the strings. The winter squash is doing great and is getting some height. The cucumber is getting bigger, but it is taking its sweet time getting any height on it. Had I known the peas would get so tall, I would have planted those differently. The tomato cage looks ugly, but the plants out grew their support. I have taken note for the future!
I am stacking the plants, so they stay close to the lights. That also allows some over lap in the lighting. I had them a bit more spread out, and I don’t think they did as well. In addition, I have lined the wall behind the plants with tinfoil. Oh yes, classy! But, it serves its purpose of reflecting the light back to the plants! I hope the plants grow up enough to hide this! All of this limits the design of the garden a bit!
I can’t wait to get my seed starts and propagated plants transplanted into nicer looking pots. I think that will help a lot. I also have some nasturtium seeds in the ugly plastic bin. I am hoping they will over flow the side and cover but the unsightly look.
Soil gnats and Springtail (small little gray bugs that seem to jump when disturbed) have been a bit of a problem. I have tried to soil gnats are bad for your plants, so I have worried about controlling them more. Springtails, apparently, are not bad for your plants but are a nascence. I have little yellow sticky traps on the tinfoil. Those catch a good number of pests. Letting the soil dry out a bit does too, but you have to be careful to not kill your plants in the process. I try to water super close to the roots to concentrate the water. I also notice that the gnats fly up to a lamp I have on in the room at night. The light seems to zap them! Gross but glad they are killed! I have also thought about adding a soil powered bug zapper that looks like a cute lantern to the garden to help control the pest without having to spray! I have not pulled the trigger but that might be a future purchase if this goes well! Things like apple cider vinegar traps did not work well for me.
CFLVG 