Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening( Stage I)

In the early summer of 2015, I finally had a few minutes, I went outside, dumped the bin of compost that was in making since we moved to the house 8 years ago, and stuck a dozen of seeds of zucchini, cucumber, tomato and eggplant each, in the soil of a corner at my backyard. (I usually plant two or three seeds in one spot).

Boy! It must be because of the rich compost made in several years of time. The zucchini and cucumber were crazy productive. I kept harvesting several of them each every a few days. There was no way my family of four could consume them all fresh even though we were having them everyday one way or another. I gave the extra to my daughter's teachers, our friends, neighbours, or whoever came to our door. I got a kick out of the receivers' look when they saw how big the zucchini were. I'm sure they were more surprised when they ate them because they were super tender, juicy, sweet, and tasty. Not only I had a great feeling because I had something to give. I also found our grocery bill was noticeably reduced during the summer. When the fridge was running low, instead of going to store to buy grocery, I picked zucchini and cucumber from the backyard corner. Now which made me ambitious. I want to significantly reduce my grocery bill. I want to grow more vegetables next season; I want to grow more variety of vegetables next season. I thought about vertical gardening or raised bed gardening. Unfortunately, living in Wisconsin means I just want to stay inside all day and dream about seeing and eating greens until next April, May, even June.

Perhaps I should start winter indoor gardening I thought. I started to search in that direction...

The search is complete when I stumped upon Peter Burke's Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 days. When I read the 10 things on his wish list they sound exactly what I'm looking for, I knew I may try it. In the end of his book, he also wrote that his salad farming makes close to $40,000 a year without making changes to his house. So by the end of the book, I know I'm trying it.

In this Instructable, I'll present Peter's wish list, provide supplies reference to get ready for this gardening approach, steps for one-round of gardening, my findings of first round indoor salad gardening, and my thoughts on furthering and making this indoor salad gardening my own.

Note: This article may contain affiliate links as references for the same or similar products used in this project. If you click on the links and make purchases I could receive a small percentage of commission from the advertising company with no extra cost to you.

This is the 10 things that are on Peter's wish list which made me first want to check out Peter's book and try his approach.

Here are the six necessary things to do indoor salad gardening Peter Burke's way:

1. Soil mix 2. Compost 3. Sea Kelp 4. Seeds 5. Mini loaf bread pans (3" by 6" by 2") 6. Newspapers (folded) (4" by 7")

I made two trips to stores, got all 6 things and spent $55.45.

If you are new to soil sprouting indoor salad gardening like me and you don't have Peter's book in hand, Here are the detailed notes for each item:

1. The soil mix isn't the outdoor backyard soil, it's standard germination mix, usually peat moss, vermiculite, perlite and lime. In his book, he discussed in detail what's to use, what's not to, and how to make your own soil mix.

2. Compost can be commercial or homemade. It's the cheapest item on the shopping list, I suggest you buy commercial compost. In his book he discussed in detail what's to use, what's not to, and how to make your own compost.

3. Liquid sea kelp or dry kelp meal are both okay as fertilizer. I bought the first 3 things in a garden store.

4. Seeds are the most expensive items. He recommended 5 varieties of sunflower, pea, radish, buckwheat, and broccoli for a salad of great color, texture and taste. I bought seeds from an organic food store. It doesn't have buckwheat seeds. So I bought some organic buckwheat and mung bean from the bulk food section. As soon as I got home I had a concern because the buckwheat kernels have been processed and don't have hulls already, I have a feeling they might not work for sprouting, the mung beans should work I think. I plan to plant buckwheat and mung beanto see if they work. The good thing is it takes only 7-10 days to know the results.

Bottom line: As far as the seeds are concerned, the best option I think is to buy a 5 part salad sprouting mix for now and grow variety of seeds in your outdoor garden as the planting season is approaching for your indoor salad gardening afterward the harvest. I found some seeds are a few times cheaper on Amazon than in my local store. I think I'm returning some seeds I bought from the local store. Oh well, what a hassle!

5. Aluminum bread loaf pans are in almost any grocery store, and you can reuse them to certain times of planting according to Peter.

6. In Perter's book, he placed a stack of wet newspaper on top of the trays to keep the sprouts moistened during the 4 days of "do nothing" time. Although he mentioned that today's newspapers are printed with ink made from soybean oil, still it's ink and I'm not a fan of it touching my food. So I opted to use fabric scraps from my sewing projects. They are new, washed, and 100% cotton. I cut 4" by 7" rectangles and stitched 4 layers together with 3" by 6" area in the center. Again we'll know in 7-10 days if this is a great success or just a nice try.

If you are interested in how this turned out, head to the next step.

I followed almost exactly the steps Peter laid out in detail in his book: soak the seeds, moisten soil mix; plant the seeds; incubate in the dark for 4 days; water daily and green the sprouts indoor for 3-5 days.

Photos 1-6 in this step are snapshots of the above steps. Nothing too hard to do here.

Below are findings of this experiment:

1. This gardening approach works but not without any modifications/improvements.

2. Do not use the aluminum bread loaf pans as containers. Peter mentioned in his book they were his preferred containers and he could reuse them for up to a few times. This was not true for me. Mine started to leak at the end of the 4-day incubation period. Choose ceramic (if you don't have small children or pets) or plastic indoor window planter to use instead.

3. Use of seeds that can actually sprout is key to success. (I have returned 4 out of the five sprouting seeds I bought from a local store because they are too expensive to buy them for less from Amazon and I'm waiting for the packages right now) I used organic mung beans, hulled buckwheat from bulk section of a grocery store, cilantro seeds from my last year's garden, cilantro seeds from a grocery store as a spice for cooking, and green peas for sprouting. Even before start, I knew the hulled buckwheat probably wouldn't work since they have been damaged and I was confirmed right. The mung beans did sprout but became rotten. Both cilantro seeds sprouted but they grow slowly. They have been growing for more than 5 days and are still growing on my window sill (the second before last picture). Sprouting cilantro I think was only mentioned but not used in Peter's book. Green pea was the only sprouts that delivered potential.

4. Soil mix and seeds especially the later are cost limiting factors of this gardening practice. If you know how to make the mix yourself or grow the seeds yourself, then you make it a few times more money friendly. In Peter's book, he discussed on such topics.

5. My first adaptation to use new and washed fabric wet with water instead of newspaper proved to be good. Not only I don't need to worry about eating ink, they are also reusable to almost unlimited times I think. And I have a lot such fabric scraps from my sewing projects. So this is a small but win win win situation for me.

6. Thanks thanks thanks for the one loaf of green pea sprouts! I used it in a salad. Absolutely great!

I'm definitely doing a few things differently from the author to make Peter Burke's year-round indoor salad gardening my way.

For example, he uses mini aluminum bread pans(3" by 6" by 2") which not only leaked on me, they just felt falling off my hand or breaking at any moment. He places the pans in a dark cabinet for the 4-day incubation period. At this stage, I'm experimenting with window planter box which is equivalent to 9 of the mini pans in surface area, which seems to improve efficiency a lot because I do each step once instead of 9 times. These boxes are also much deeper, I just fill soil to the 2" height and stack them up (stacking make the seeds stay in the dark and eliminates the need for a dark cabinet), cover the top with a bottom saucer and leave them any where in the house for the 4-day incubation period. These window planter boxes are available in any stores or online in many sizes, shapes, colors, and plastic or ceramic. They also have matching bottom saucer (you'll need two, one for collecting water at bottom, one for covering top when they are stacked during the 4-day incubation period).

I'll share my findings of further indoor salad gardening here or somewhere, so check back in.

Meanwhile I'm new in this and unstoppable. Anyone has done more in this kind of gardening? Or anyone who has more gardening experience in general please feel free to weigh in in comments and reign me.

Please vote this Instructable for Urban Farming Contest. Thanks a lot.

Note: This article may contain affiliate links as references for the same or similar products used in this project. If you click on the links and make purchases I could receive a small percentage of commission from the advertising company with no extra cost to you.