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Electronic Ballasts

Growing Vegetables Year Round

How do cherry tomatoes in the dead of winter sound to you, a gardener in a northern clime wishing for summer? Impossible, you say. Not if you garden indoors. Vegetables of all types can be grown year-round indoors, with the proper light, soil, fertilizer and temperature, as well as focusing on suitable plant varieties.

If you are going to grow indoor vegetables in winter, you will need to start by raising plants from seed in late summer or early fall. It's best to buy your seeds in the spring if you wish to do this, because it is not always easy to find seeds for sale at local garden centers in the fall.

Use a light seedling mix for starting your seeds. Its loose consistency will make it easy for the plants new roots to start to develop. After the seedlings have two true leaves, you can begin to carefully transplant them into individual four-inch containers. You can use any good potting soil for this purpose, but do not use regular garden soil. It is usually very heavy, has poor drainage and can also harbor disease and insects that can kill your new starts.

Because you will be watering these plants every day or every other day to keep the roots properly moist, you are also washing nutrients out of the soil. So feed your plants with a complete organic fertilizer every couple of weeks to give them the food they need to grow and flourish.

You will be playing with temperatures when raising indoor vegetables to suit the particular plants you wish to grow. Some vegetables, such as lettuce, endive, and radishes like cooler indoor temperatures. Daytime temperatures in the 60s work well, while night temperatures should go no lower than the 40s. A basement situation might work well to provide these temperatures, or an unheated porch if it doesn't get too cold.

Sun lovers like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and beans must have daytime temperatures in the upper 70s and nights can go down no lower than 60 in order for these plants to flower and produce fruit. You will likely need to provide bottom heat to your containers to make sure they are warm enough to do well indoors.

If you do not have the proper hydroponic lights, you will be doomed to failure when it comes to growing vegetables indoors. This is of utmost importance to your success. You need to keep your light two to four inches above your plants for them to thrive. HID lamps, in conjunction with digital ballasts or electronic ballasts can be purchased in as hydroponic grow light kits, work well for this purpose. These grow lights provide a complete spectrum of light for every stage of plant growth, and work well in indoor applications.

About the Author

Susan Slobac is an expert in indoor gardening topics such as hydroponic gardening, digital ballasts and full spectrum grow lights.

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