Carl Cloutier

Greetings, I’m Carl. Welcome to my page. I'm an ACMPR consultant living in Toronto. I am a fan of volunteering, homesteading and indoor gardening. On the side I write, sketch and paint.

You can read my article about growing indoors with a click on the button above.

Here are some quick tips on getting set up growing indoors. Growing indoors does not have to be complex or expensive. Basically, you’ll need three main things.

Soil, light and seeds.

Soil is the most important part about growing indoors. I suggest you grow in a very simple mixture of 1 part soilless potting mix and 1 part compost.

The soilless potting mix will hold water while allowing free drainage in the pot. This is important as most of the issues indoor growers encounter have to do with over-watering and the soil being too saturated for too long.

There are usually enough nutrients in the compost to completely eliminate the need for fertilizer products.

The next most important part is the light. Light is a very important part of growing indoors. If you have a south or southwest facing window in the northern hemisphere or a north facing window in the southern hemisphere, you can take advantage of the free sunlight. If you don't have access to a window, you can use grow lights to grow indoors during the winter.

When choosing grow lights, pick the right type of light bulb. Incandescent bulbs don’t work very well but compact fluorescent and fluorescent light bulbs do work very well.

There are more expensive options such as LED and high pressure sodium lights, just to name a few, but for most indoor grows, you can stick with more affordable fluorescent lights.

The second recommended thing is to look for a bulb that has the highest watts available in the right Kelvin rating. You are looking for a Kelvin rating of 6,500 or 2,100.

There's no grow light that can come close to replicating the natural light during summer. You can push the limits with some very expensive equipment but you can keep things simple and focus on the crops that you know will work well indoors under lower light conditions.

The final thing you will need are seeds. There are a few limitations to what you can grow. Leafy greens and herbs are well-established to grow in lower light areas making them perfect candidates to grow indoors later in the season. Growing indoors during the winter allows you to harvest fresh herbs and leafy greens.