Radishes are quick and easy
to grow indoors.

Indoor Farming

You need a few sunny windowsills or supplemental lighting to grow vegetables, which require at least six hours of direct sun daily. Plant dwarf or patio varieties of vegetables in pots, window boxes, or improvised containers. Hanging baskets make suitable homes for tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes. Train pole beans up tepees or trellises that you make with bamboo poles, or string monofilament from a windowsill planter to the top of the window frame and guide the stems into a living curtain.

Make decorative arrangements by combining different crops in one container. Plant red- and green-leaf lettuce together, for example, or edge a container holding a patio tomato with leaf lettuce and radishes.

Fertilize vegetables every two weeks. Water to keep the soil evenly moist, especially when plants begin to flower and produce fruit. Help fruit production by lightly brushing plants with your hand to spread pollen as they bloom.

Indoor vegetables often have less flavor than those you grow outdoors, but they definitely have more than most of what you buy at the store.

• Bush beans
• Bush tomato
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Loose-leaf lettuce
• Patio tomatoes
• Peas
• Pole beans
• Radishes
• Scallions
• Spinach