Why Your Outdoor Garden Should Be Indoors
Have you ever watched a video on gardening and wished you had the perfect weather for it? You do! Where can you go for the perfect weather for your garden? Indoors!
If you’ve not been following the advances in gardening you’ve probably missed the wonderful new technologies and techniques that have vastly reduced the amount of space, water, and effort that goes into growing a garden.
Not Your Grandfather's Garden
What goes into the typical backyard garden? First, you need a decent-sized back yard. You’ll need a tiller to clear a large plot. In early spring, you’ll churn the topsoil and clear any debris that built up over the winter. Bring in the hoe, rake, and shovel to finish the job. Depending on where you live, you might need to construct a fence to keep the wildlife from pilfering your plants. A weed barrier around the entire tilled area might help keep yard growth from creeping into your garden, so set that up. And bring in a water source, maybe on a timer. You haven’t even put the first seed into the ground yet.
After you prepared your garden site, you can finally sow your seeds. Unless you have a fancy seeder, you’ll do this by hand, on your knees, in the dirt. Add water, and call it a day. Now, you wait.
When the seedlings show themselves, you clip any competing seedlings so you have only one plant per recommended spacing. Such a waste of seeds. Add water, pull any weeds, and call it a day.
As your plants grow, you continue to pull weeds and battle pests. It seems every plant requires a different solution to repel bugs.
Finally, harvest time arrives. You spend the day bending over your plants, collecting goodies. Throw away the veggies the bugs got first.
An outdoor garden requires much hard work and success isn’t guaranteed. Bad knees or a bad back makes tending to an outdoor garden difficult or even painful. Gardens are wonderful projects, but you’ll find there are newer ways to grow your food without the large back yard, tiller, digging, or weeding.
Not Your Father's Garden
Raised bed gardening improves on the plowed rows technique. The biggest problem with growing in rows directly on the ground is the sheer amount of land required. You plant seeds a few inches apart in rows separated by feet. You’re wasting all that space between rows.
If the plants can be planted several inches apart in one direction, then why not in all directions? That’s the question answered by square foot gardening, which is often associated with raised bed gardening. (Learn more about square foot gardening in the incredibly popular book by Mel Bartholomew, All New Square Foot Gardening. {paid link}) If you have a small outdoor space for a garden, raised beds are the way to go.
But raised beds are still outdoors. They solve the space issue. For example, you can plant nine (9) green bean seeds in a single square foot block. But you still need to construct the bed itself. You can do it yourself by following instructions in a book {paid link}, but easy-to-build raised bed kits are available {paid link}. So, like a plowed garden, you invest a significant amount of time before dropping a single seed in the ground.
Raised beds are clearly superior to rows for the home gardener. Just understand seeds for weeds inevitably still find their way into your garden. Bugs still attack your plants. You’ll need to keep a watering schedule or set up a garden hose on a timer. A raised bed is better than plowed rows, but it’s certainly not a set-it-and-forget-it solution.

- NEXT-LEVEL GROW SYSTEM: Using Aerospring’s patented aeroponic technology, this all-in-one grow system doesn’t require any additional components to grow like a pro. The root zone is contained in the modular vertical pole, and allows the plant’s roots to grow to their greatest potential. In addition to the Aerospring aeroponic system, the grow kit comes with everything you would expect including: 180W grow light, quiet exhaust fan, carbon-filter, metal frame, D600 grow tent.
- HIGH QUALITY 180W LED GROW LIGHT: The all new, Aerospring Hexglow custom 180W custom LED light panel, full-spectrum, professional grow lights, highly efficient at 2.7 (umol/J), light intensity at 1272 PPFD (μmol/s) at 15in, CRI >90, CCT = 4000k, estimated lifespan 50,000 hours. Suitable spectrum for all stages of plant growth. 0-100% light dimmer included. Adjustable light height can be raised as the plant canopy grows.
- DESIGNED BY GARDENERS, FOR GARDENERS: We designed the Aerospring system to be the most usable hydroponic system. Easy access to the water reservoir for water management. The 20 gallon reservoir requires less frequent refilling. Easily detachable internal hose for draining/changing water. The vertical pole is easy to disassemble for cleaning and reassembly, and dishwasher safe. The wheelbase allows for easy movement and rotation for trimming leaves.
- TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED: 4" carbon air filter with Australia virgin charcoal, changeable pre-filter. Quiet 4" inline duct fan with 0-100% variable speed controller, cutting edge brushless EC Motor and dual jet type blades, delivers 160 CFM airflow rate using just 18 watts at maximum speed for discreet and high performance growing.
- GROW TENT FOR DISCREET GROWING: The fully sealable grow tent made with Oxford D600 tent material, with highly reflective white interior panels, increases plant growth while eliminating 100% of light seepage. Two colors available, gray and black, to fit with any interior.
- IN THE BOX: The Aerospring Grower’s Edition Indoor Hydroponic System includes the Aerospring patented vertical pole with 9 plant capacity, 20gal bucket & lid, Aerospring Hexglow custom 180W LED light panel and driver, Quiet 4" inline duct fan, 4" carbon air filter, Powder-coated metal hexagonal frame with wheelbase, Oxford D600 tent, Sicce Syncra Silent 1.5, Smart WiFi Power Strip, SCROG Net, 1L Aerospring Hexgrow (A&B) nutrients, LCD Hygrometer, 9 Grodan Rockwool cubes, 9 Grow cups. Warranty: 12 month manufacturer's warranty on all parts; 24 months manufacturer’s warranty on Hexglow LED light panel; 3+2 year manufacturer’s warranty on Sicce Syncra Silent 1.5 pump. Seedlings not included.
Bring Your Garden Indoors
You cannot plow rows in your kitchen tile or set up a raised bed in the center of the living room. What does an indoor garden even look like? Some aspects of your indoor garden will look very familiar, but others will amaze you in how innovative they are.
Here are some reasons you’ll love having your garden under your roof.
Why Indoors?
Once you learn all the ways your garden can be better indoors, you’ll wish you’d started one earlier.
Weather is Not a Factor
When you move your outdoor garden indoors, you eliminate weather as a factor in the success of your garden. You don’t delay planting because the outside temperature is too cold or dread going outside because it’s too hot. You won’t watch hail eliminate your garden in just a few minutes. You don’t plead to the clouds for rain or curse them for providing too much rain. You are the weather so far as your indoor garden is concerned.
Year-Round Garden
Your growing season is now year-round. Instead of planning for one planting season in the spring and maybe another in the fall, you’ll plant any time you want.
Those seeds you might put in the ground in January can be planted alongside April seeds when you grow your garden inside.
Then, as soon as one plant dies off, start another.
Climate Controlled
You control the temperature, humidity, and light levels that affect your garden. Your house temperature probably remains between 68° and 78°, a favorable temperature range for most plants.
You can plant any day of the year. No longer must you delay and delay again your plantings due to a forecast of a late spring frost.
Fresh, Not Frozen
Why freeze an entire harvest when you can have fresh food any time of the year? You maintain a continuous supply of veggies, greens, and herbs by planting the next generation of seeds to coincide with the expected end-of-life of your current crop.
No Weeding
Just about the only weeding you’ll be doing is thinning seedlings in potted plantings. Your indoor garden environment is controlled. If you’ve cleared weeds from long rows of plants or plucked hundreds of tiny plants that invaded your raised bed, you’ll certainly appreciate this nearly weed-proof garden.
Few Pests
Bugs have an uncanny ability to find the plants you most want to protect, but they’ll have a hard time finding your indoor garden.
If you grow your plants in soil, your garden may attract more bugs than plants growing in a Mufga or iDOO hydroponic system. But you’ll probably never step into your living room to find a neon green caterpillar gorging itself on the very last leaf of your doomed tomato plant. If you’ve grown tomatoes outdoors, you’ve likely experienced the dejection of realizing all your effort went to feed one caterpillar.
Less Bending, Kneeling, and Squatting
When tending to your indoor garden, you’ll do less bending, kneeling, and squatting than you would for an outdoor garden. This alone might clinch the deal for you if you have knee or back issues!
Preparing your garden and then keeping your plants healthy is actual work! Even a raised bed requires you to transport and spread the peat moss or other filler.
Quicker Harvests
You’ll often harvest your produce in less time by growing plants indoors, depending on your set-up. Since your plants compete less with weeds and don’t need to fend off pests, you’ll get your produce in less time, and it’ll be less damaged. Your plants get just the right nutrients to expedite their growth.
When you want to start a new planter, you can have seeds “in the ground” in an hour or less, especially with the new hydroponic kits from companies like Mufga and iDOO.
Predictability
Your harvest is never guaranteed, but it is certainly more predictable when your garden is grown in the protection of your kitchen or living room.
Over time, as you become familiar with the process, you’ll get to where you can predict how much food you’ll harvest and when. If you want to go the scientific route, you can log when you planted, watered, fed, and harvested so you can plan ahead on the next round.
Cleaner
Keeping your indoor garden neat and tidy takes very little time. Your plants may shed some leaves or flowers, but overall cause very little mess.
You won’t need to clear out the leaves that fell from nearby trees or grass clippings.
No DEET Necessary
Flying and biting insects can turn a pleasant afternoon planting, pruning, or harvesting into a rush job so you can escape back inside. They can really ruin the joy.
Mosquitos, ticks, and fleas are hardly a problem when you’re tending to your indoor garden. You won’t need need to coat yourself in DEET or sunscreen and then shower afterward.
Conversation Starter
When you invite guests into your house, they’ll be curious how you are able to grow so much of your food indoors. You can demonstrate how you’ve used a variety of growing techniques to produce such a bountiful indoor garden. Perhaps some of what you’ve grown ended up in your dinner!
Educational Opportunity
Your children and grandchildren may spend very little time outdoors nowadays, so getting them interested in a garden is much easier when the garden is in the house. You can show them hydroponics, aquaponics, vertical gardening, and soil-based planters. You can explain why you chose the grow medium for specific plants. You can demonstrate how plants can grow without soil.
Children can learn much from growing plants indoors, then get rewarded with the food they eat.
- NEXT-LEVEL GROW SYSTEM: Using Aerospring’s patented aeroponic technology, this all-in-one grow system doesn’t require any additional components to grow like a pro. The root zone is contained in the modular vertical pole, and allows the plant’s roots to grow to their greatest potential. In addition to the Aerospring aeroponic system, the grow kit comes with everything you would expect including: 180W grow light, quiet exhaust fan, carbon-filter, metal frame, D600 grow tent.
- HIGH QUALITY 180W LED GROW LIGHT: The all new, Aerospring Hexglow custom 180W custom LED light panel, full-spectrum, professional grow lights, highly efficient at 2.7 (umol/J), light intensity at 1272 PPFD (μmol/s) at 15in, CRI >90, CCT = 4000k, estimated lifespan 50,000 hours. Suitable spectrum for all stages of plant growth. 0-100% light dimmer included. Adjustable light height can be raised as the plant canopy grows.
- DESIGNED BY GARDENERS, FOR GARDENERS: We designed the Aerospring system to be the most usable hydroponic system. Easy access to the water reservoir for water management. The 20 gallon reservoir requires less frequent refilling. Easily detachable internal hose for draining/changing water. The vertical pole is easy to disassemble for cleaning and reassembly, and dishwasher safe. The wheelbase allows for easy movement and rotation for trimming leaves.
- TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED: 4" carbon air filter with Australia virgin charcoal, changeable pre-filter. Quiet 4" inline duct fan with 0-100% variable speed controller, cutting edge brushless EC Motor and dual jet type blades, delivers 160 CFM airflow rate using just 18 watts at maximum speed for discreet and high performance growing.
- GROW TENT FOR DISCREET GROWING: The fully sealable grow tent made with Oxford D600 tent material, with highly reflective white interior panels, increases plant growth while eliminating 100% of light seepage. Two colors available, gray and black, to fit with any interior.
- IN THE BOX: The Aerospring Grower’s Edition Indoor Hydroponic System includes the Aerospring patented vertical pole with 9 plant capacity, 20gal bucket & lid, Aerospring Hexglow custom 180W LED light panel and driver, Quiet 4" inline duct fan, 4" carbon air filter, Powder-coated metal hexagonal frame with wheelbase, Oxford D600 tent, Sicce Syncra Silent 1.5, Smart WiFi Power Strip, SCROG Net, 1L Aerospring Hexgrow (A&B) nutrients, LCD Hygrometer, 9 Grodan Rockwool cubes, 9 Grow cups. Warranty: 12 month manufacturer's warranty on all parts; 24 months manufacturer’s warranty on Hexglow LED light panel; 3+2 year manufacturer’s warranty on Sicce Syncra Silent 1.5 pump. Seedlings not included.
Where Outdoors Wins
The great outdoors beats your indoors for growing gardens several ways.
If you grow a large volume of food, you probably don’t have the space indoors to match the quantity you can grow outside. Most people looking to grow a garden indoors want to have enough fresh food for their immediate needs.
Some plants sprawl out, covering large amounts of ground space. These plants can probably be grown indoors, but require planning and space.
Sunlight certainly trumps LED grow lights for sheer quantity of light. Even on the cloudy days, plants benefit from sunlight. You can place plants near windows to capture some free sunlight but artificial lights are the norm for growing food indoors.
Your outdoor plants enjoy numerous visits from pollinators. You’ll take the place of pollinators for your indoor garden.
And, of course, it’s always nice to just be outside yourself. But if your garden is growing so well indoors, you can just relax when you’re outside.
Key Takeaways
Your grandfather grew a garden in rows plowed into the soil. Your father built raised beds and used square foot gardening. You can just grow your garden indoors. Instead of growing enough food for storage over winter, grow just enough to use each day and keep your garden steadily producing all year. You can still store or give away any excess.
Your indoor garden is a food source, a hobby, a conversation piece, and an educational opportunity. Plus, it just looks beautiful and maybe even cleans up the air a bit.
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