Indoor gardening strikes excitement within the hearts of homesteaders, because it allows us to deny winter (as much as we can, anyways…).
Overall, being able to produce your own greens, fully grown vegetables, and even flowers indoors without sunlight is extremely exhilarating.
However, doing everything artificially doesn’t eliminate the troubles of a traditional backyard garden…. as a matter of fact, some of these problems are actually more intense due to the protected and small environment.
You don’t want to see your plants fail, but you might be faced with this reality if you miss any of these important memos. Consider this your crash course in dodging failure, rather than a “how-to” guide.
There are so many mistakes that can be made when growing indoors, and beginners are prone to experiencing them. These mistakes are very easy to avoid, so let’s get started!
Indoor Gardening with LED Lights
When you grow plants indoors, you eliminate natural sunlight, most plant pests, wind and rain, temperature fluctuations, and most diseases.
However, there are certain issues that crop up with indoor gardens; leggy seedlings, failing to flower or fruit, spider mite infestations, and more.
Yes, spider mites. They drive me absolutely insane!
….. They will likely find you, too. Be prepared!
When you compare different lighting setups, beginner LED grow lights are ideal for indoor gardening because they put off less heat (might not be a “good” thing for those who need the heat during colder months), they use less electricity, and they have longer lifespans. These light fixtures also tend to have colors from across the spectrum (like the one I linked to above), significantly increasing your success while growing your seedlings and plants to healthy transplants or to flowering and fruiting.
Leggy & Weak Plants
One of the biggest issues for indoor gardeners is leggy or weak plants. In nature, the sun provides plenty of light in the right wavelengths, ensuring that plants germinate, sprout, mature, flower, and fruit efficiently. Plants naturally thrive under the sun’s light.
Indoors, a weak or small light will produce weak seedlings and plants. Using a small LED grow light like this one is great for starting a small batch of seedlings, sure; but you’re not going to have the best results with a full sized pepper plant, though. The lighting itself would be fine, however, the fixture and the overall quantity of light produced could cause the plant to become leggy and weak. It would need something a little bit bigger.
For seedlings, legginess is very common. You must ensure that your light is as close to the seedlings as possible without causing damage to the tender young plants. If the light is too far, they will stretch for it rather quickly. This results in a thin stem, which may collapse under the weight of the growing plant.
For the best results with seedlings, follow these two tips:
- Always keep the light source as close as possible to the young plants.
- Keep a fan on the plants as often as you can, as this wind will force the seedlings to grow stronger, in order to resist being blown over in a storm. If you can’t use a fan, simply flick the seedlings around gently twice a day, mimicking their movement in high wind gusts.
Spider Mite Infestations
I find spider mites to be one of the biggest pest problems with indoor plants. You have to keep a great spider mite treatment for your plants on hand, especially if you’re a busy person! Spider mites are incredibly problematic for three reasons:
- Spider mites reproduce quickly and exponentially; you can go from one spider mite to a heavily infested indoor garden in a matter of days- outdoor gardens are subjected to the elements, largely controlling populations of these mites.
- When a spider mite population begins to explode, the plant can be damaged and die off in record time; the mites feed on the plant, covering it in hundreds of thousands of wounds and depleting its resources.
- You have to look very closely for spider mites, and most people don’t see them until it’s too late.
Observe your indoor garden for spider mites at least twice a week. One great way to test for spider mites is to vigorously shake a branch over a white piece of paper, then using a magnifying glass to check for mites. They can be very hard to see.
You can also pour water over the foliage of a plant, washing mites off into a white dish. Rain water helps to keep the population of spider mites low on plants outdoors, while beneficial insects are in charge of tackling the rest. When keeping a garden under LED lights indoors, you don’t have access to these natural population control methods.
If you find mites, do not wait to treat them. Spray your plants immediately, as the current damage won’t be evident for a few days. For example- your plant may look healthy today, but it may be in a critical state tomorrow due to the damage that is actively occurring today.
Lack of Flowers & Fruit on Indoor Plants
Unless you are growing seedlings or plants strictly for foliage (such as salad greens, leafy herbs, or chives), you’re going to require the correct lighting in order to initiate flowering and fruiting. Every plant has different requirements, so please know that you’ll experience a learning curve with this. We won’t be covering specifics here today, but you need to know about how the differences in light output and timing influence fruiting and flowering.
Firstly, plants perform best when presented with red and blue light; blue light is advantageous for foliage growth, while red light helps the plant to flower and set fruit. A healthy combination within a single LED light (with some white light, as well), is a great place to start with your plants. In addition to the types of light that plants need, their daylight length requirements will vary, as well. Plants prefer to grow as much as they can so that they can flower and set as much fruit (seed) as possible; however, they want to be able to mature their fruits and seeds before the growing season ends. Otherwise, they will fail to successfully reproduce.
Daylight length (in combination with temperatures in many cases) is responsible for determining when a plant will develop a bulb or produce their fruits. In the early stages, during vigorous vegetative growth, the plants can make use of extended daylight hours. Once you reach a certain number of hours per day (or after you reach a peak, then begin to decrease daylight hours), plants will be triggered to fruit. A great example here is onions; if you have grown onions, you’ve probably noticed a bulb doesn’t develop in long day onions until close to the summer solstice. This goes for folks in the northern hemisphere, who peak at 14 to 16 hours of daylight during the solstice.
This is a very complex topic, and can take a bit of research to master. I recommend lights like the one I linked to earlier in this post for beginners, rather than the standard fluorescent growing lights that I enjoy using for my seedlings. This allows you to get a start on growing your plants now indoors, while learning all about the specific conditions you’ll have to create to encourage your chosen plant to flower and fruit in a few weeks. You will need to know (for each type of plant):
- Color of light for flowering and fruiting (there are exceptions to the red light requirements)
- Temperature range for flowering and fruiting
- Nutrient requirements
- Daylight length requirements
- Potential conditions that encourage flower or fruit drop
Severe Nutrient Deficiencies
If you don’t keep your plants fed well, their overall success will be affected, no matter what type of light your plants depend on. Plants may succumb to disease or pests, they may not produce healthy foliage, they could be stunted or sparsely leafed, they may fail to flower or fruit, and you will likely see other symptoms such as discoloration, disfigured leaves or branches, and stunted fruits. This can happen outdoors, too; but it is significantly intensified in indoor gardens, where soil is sparse and natural processes are eliminated (such as nutrient rich runoff after a storm, natural fertilizing by birds and other animals, and the beautiful work of earth worms).
Before you throw just any type of fertilizer at the plants, please research the requirements of your plants. For example, root vegetables like potatoes favor P and K, phosphorous and potassium. They don’t require higher nitrogen levels- too much nitrogen will cause gorgeous foliage growth, but it will cost you in tuber production as the plant will redirect energy towards its foliage. Corn is a heavy feeder all around, but it is in the grass family and requires ample nitrogen.
It does go even deeper than this, though. If you experience blossom end rot in tomatoes, for example, either your soil is too dry or you may have calcium deficiencies. This is not fixed by your standard N-P-K fertilizer. Therefore, you can easily harm your plants by simply tossing fertilizer at every potential nutrient problem you encounter. In the image above, my peppers suffered from a bout of blossom end rot; in the end, supplemental watering fixed the problem (simple fix!) I was heavily relying on rainfall, but a drought brought that to an end, as my peppers needed more water in order to take up calcium for healthy fruits. Learn to grow each plant separately, and you will become an expert at growing each plant in your seed binder in no time at all.
Be sure that you are providing the right growing medium, the right fertilizer, and the right soil amendments when your plants need them, and you will see them thrive! I know this all sounds confusing, but you will learn your plants quite quickly; much like a mother figures out her newborn.