How To Grow Vegetables Indoors Using Soil

1. Intro: Hello and welcome to my Skillshare course. My name is Ashley and I have a Bachelors of Science in soil science and a minor in plant science. In this course, you're going to learn how to grow indoors. Your final project is going to be showing off your indoor grow setup and ultimately helping other people achieve the same goal with giving them tips and tricks of how you made it suit your environment. This specific course is only going to be about growing in swell, whereas future courses will also include hydro. So with that being said, let's get started. 2. Choosing A Container : The first part of growing indoors is determining what container to use. In this case, we're using soil so we don't necessarily need something that holds water and leak would benefit from something that has drainage pores. So this means that we can use a classic container, but any food safe plastic will actually work. These are considered containers that will not lead to harmful products into the potting soil solution uptake in by plants. Some really great examples of this are five-gallon pill buckets, which are labeled food safe. Even the Rubbermaid roughneck neck containers are a member for of course, you can use anything that you purchased food in. So these can be things from the grocery store to go meals and stuff of that nature. You can also use cardboard, cardboard boxes shockingly do hold soil pretty well. One thing you want to keep in mind though, when choosing a container is how you're going to contain that water. So one example I have is a self watering kit. It's called buckets up, but any of these DIY or otherwise would work. It essentially involves having a bucket that does not have holes in the bottom, and instead using a bottom watering system and get pillory action inside of our soil. This allows us to water our plants when the trigger point tells us to you without ending up with water on the ground. If we choose to use a container that has holes in the bottom, we want some sort of catchment system. This can come in the form of an actual grow tent or simply just a bottom saucer for that container. Keep in mind that grow ten is not necessary. The only role for grow tent is actually to reflect light and intensify it onto your plan. If you use a crow ten, it's not uncommon that you are going to actually need to decrease your light intensity. This can be done through a dimmer or through lowering or lifting your life. This is because the light intensity inside of growth is much higher. So step one is finding that container. This example, I'm using a five-gallon pill bucket that is considered food safe with the bucket up self-monitoring system. This is because I don't want to have to have a faster render it. I want to be able to not put as much attention into watering and let the system be able to self-sustain itself without continuous monitoring. 3. Choosing A Potting Soil: We looked at containers, now we need to determine what soil is going to go into those containers. If we're using a self watering system, we want to go with a swell that has very large particulates of pearlite. This means medium to large size and we want a relatively large amount. When we're using a self watering system we're working on to pillory action means that we are working against gravity. When we're working against gravity, we're working with small pores that suck the water up. This means that we need to be able to provide some air. Plant roots do need some air, oxygen and CO2, in particular, plant roots very simply put, need air. In particular, they need aerobic soil. When we end up with too much CO2 or anaerobic soil, we end up with some harmful bacteria that tends to colonize the area. This can result in things like root rot or damping off. So we want to have more pearlite rather than less. This allows for some air to be in that system, despite the fact that it is being bottled water, if we're watering simply top to bottom and we have holes in the bottom of our container. We don't have to worry about this as much. We can go with just a regular potting soil. A great example of something that could be in a self watering system would be something like the Jocelyn means soil booster, such as what I have here, it's very poorest and it ultimately has a lot of chunks in it. Or sunshine Makes five. So I'm trying to mix number five again, has very large chunks of pearlite. Otherwise regular Pro Max and Miracle Grow would work in a system where we have the holes in the bottom and we're flushing the water through and working with gravity rather than against it. One thing you want to keep in mind is fertilizer. So you want to use fresh soil whenever possible. Fresh soil will mean less pests, such as fungus gnats, thrips, mealybugs, aphids because it's been packaged properly. And in some cases when we go with something that's been dehydrated into a cube, this results for pest management is even better. The other thing to keep in mind is that fresh soil will have higher levels organic material that ultimately will fertilize our plants. The nice thing about growing in soil, as we don't have to worry about fertilizer. So long as we're using fresh soil, when we're using fresh soil, we won't have passed and we actually will not have to fertilize throughout the entire growing season if you're reusing soil, one thing to keep in mind is that you may end up with some pests and you ultimately will need to fertilize, will have a section on pest control as well as fertilization. A little bit further in this course. 4. Seed Selection: Next part of the course is seed selection. Now this is important when we're looking at things that fruit and flowers. Otherwise the rules don't necessarily apply when we're talking about roots, leafy greens, and herbs. When we're looking for leafy greens, we want to look for something that is non pelletized. Pelletized seed is not chemically treated. It actually is just a clay that's surrounding the seed. Vcs are almost partially Germany did inside of that little pellet. And while these work great for planting outdoors or metering outdoors, they do have an expiration date. If we're choosing to grow indoors, we can't necessarily so the entire pack, this means that after about six months to a year, the germination rates begin to decrease. If you choose to use pelletized by the packages in fewer quantity, then you won't have to worry about this issue. Now, when it comes to picking herbs and the greens, you can go with anything, literally anything. All of these will be reasonably sized because you'll be continually harvesting from that plant. And very rarely with these get to full maturity and then endorsed system because you will be continually consuming them. The next popular plant to grow and doors is peppers and peppers. You can again go with any variety. This can be bell peppers, it can be spicy ones such as these Filipinos. You name it having arrows, et cetera. All of these stayed relatively compact and small and are completely manageable indoors. There's nothing special to look for when choosing a pepper seed to grow indoors. If you're choosing to go for something like a cucumber or tomato, you want to go for something that is considered dwarf. These plants usually needs to be trust or staked in some way due to the size that they can get. Because we're dealing with indoor situations, we want to go for a determinant, dwarfed non trellis or small version. This will be listed on the actual packages themselves are really popular cucumber variety to go with is called a patio snack, or this is a complex plant specifically meant for growing in containers. The tomato equivalent to this is called a Red Robin tomato. The Red Robin tomatoes are determinants small compact cherry tomato plants. This will allow you to grow indoors without stressing the area that you're growing in and having to buy more grow lights as the plant spreads out on your property. If you're choosing to grow fruit vegetables indoors, such as Beats, turnips, radishes, or carrots. The only thing we actually had to take into consideration is not the seed variety, but the container itself being narrow or wide and a deaf that's adequate for those to grow in. This is why things like five-gallon buckets don't necessarily work for growing root vegetable root vegetables indoors. But roughneck rubor means do work great for this because they are of appropriate dimensions to allow for ease of planting things you can't grow on doors are mainly monocot plants. So this would be things like corn, wheat, rye, and barley, anything that looks like a grass. This is because they need when to germinate. And there's a lot of other crazy stuff that goes along with these plants. So you want to avoid these guys whenever possible. If you're choosing to grow and doors, you will need to pollinate your plants if they're flowering. This will include things like how Pinto's, tomatoes and cucumbers. All of these plants will need to be pollinated if you're growing along with me, the next course that I outlined, which will involve flowering plants and how to fertilize them in an indoor setting, I will go through the differences in the flowers and how to obtain fruit from them. So keep that in mind when you're choosing new grow indoors with soil or hydro, your seat selection is important. If you don't want to have to sit there with a Q-tip or vibrating toothbrush to ensure Polynesian, you may just want to stick with a leafy greens and herbs for this case. In the case of herbs, we will be doing something called topping and courses in the future. But for right now, let's just not worry about it. It's not complicated. And a beginner, even someone who doesn't even know anything about plants will know how to top. It's very simple to do. 5. Lighting: A question I often get is whether or not you need grow lights. And the answer is yes. Unfortunately, if we grow in a window, no matter how sunny, we will end up with legacy plans or just poor performance in general. The light doesn't have to be special and I don't want you to overthink this. I want you to go for something that's considered full spectrum and has an adjustable height or a dimmer. The dimmer will allow you to adjust the light intensity as needed. If your groin, leafy greens and herbs, you're gonna find that you don't need as much light as you're growing peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. You're going to realize you need more light. So these are all things that you need to take into consideration. If you want a plant that's going to be able to serve you for a while, go with something that has a dimmer and the adjustable height. Otherwise you can go with just adjustable height, which will allow you to adjust your plants up and down. But again, don't overthink this. Just grab something cheap at Amazon or your local hardware store. Anything will work. 6. Seed starting : Next thing we want to look at is planting, if we're planting things like cucumbers, peppers, or tomatoes, one plant at a time as good enough or however many plants using q need to be able to feed your family if you're planting herbs, I strongly encourage you to grow one plant at a time. And then in the middle of that plants grow cycle around 30 to 60 days, start another plant. This will ensure you have continuous Harvest even after the first planet has deceased. If we're doing things like greens, lettuce, things of that nature, then you want to actually do something called wave planting. This involves planting enough plants for a week, planting enough plants to feed your family for approximately two weeks. And then every week after that planting a subsequent amount of plants to feed your plant family for two-week. This is what we call wave planting. This will ensure that your family will have food or leafy greens for a prolonged period of time. For me and my case, I like to do three lettuce plants a week. So this means I grow three lettuce plants from week one to two. On week two, the beginning of week two, I start a, another three lettuce plants. Week three, I started another, another three week for another three, et cetera and so forth. I will then review what my stock looks like. And if I'm eating through plants or lot, if I'm eating less than three, then I will backoff and the number of plants I'm planting. But regardless, every week I'm starting a new batch. I usually start these seeds at the same time. I'm doing my rounds to ensure what needs to be watered. Plants do have germination rates and I will do a course separate on this for just seed starting in general, when we get closer to that time of year, one thing that you need to consider is that the germination rate is not 100% ever. If anything there around 80% on average. This means for every one plant you want, you would want to plant seeds. Now it seems like access and wasteful. And in some cases all three seeds may terminate, but it's more likely that one or two will germinate. So keep this in mind if you're relying on this and not just doing this as a hobby, you will want to ensure you're planting enough seats every single week. In my case, I like to plant around eight feeds to supply me with three plants. Give him I end up with an overage Sometimes, but it helps me ensured that I do have that leafy green organic food ready whenever I need it because you're growing in soil, you actually can start the seeds directly in the system. This is the nice part about ROI and tall when we're growing in hydro, the process of seed starting does vary a little bit. So that is something to keep in mind. 7. Pest Management: Let's quickly look at pest management from the perspective of soil. Soil is notorious for having things like fungus gnats, thrips, mealy bugs that are soil borne and things of that nature. That's just something that comes along with growing in soil. We don't often see this in hydro so long as the environment is clean around the actual plants themselves. So in order to counteract this and make this as easy as possible, we want to use different forms of prevention early on. And again, one of the best ways to prevent against pest issues is to choose a soil that has been dehydrated into the blocks. The dehydrated blocks help ensure that larvae and eggs do not survive the transport and ultimately make their way into your home. If you're choosing to go for bag swell or you're unable to find a dehydrated soil block that I encourage you to pick something that's been stored in doors, not something that's been stored outdoors or inside of a greenhouse. There are typically tiny holes on the bag because potting soil has organic material, this organic material will decompose, which releases CO2. If the manufacturer did not put holes in the bag, the bags themselves would begin to split due to gas buildup, but the little holes they add to help prevent against the CO2 bloating ultimately results in things like fungus gnats, thrips, and other pests getting through the membrane. That means they're laying eggs and larvae in that soil. Once we add water, we end up with those paths inside of our home, which kind of defeats a lot of the fun about indoor growing. So what I encourage you to do is get something like eight beneficial nematodes. This is a great example of that. Now you don't have to go with this product because there's many different products out there on the market. This one may only be available to Canadians and those who are watching from other places in the world. You may not have access to these. The key here is you're looking for what this nematode is able to eat. These are microscopic so you will not see them, but what they do eat is fungus gnats, thrips, aphids, mealybugs that are born in the soil, that is their meal source. This means if we place these in the swell prior to them hatching, we are able to eliminate them before they can even get started. Other preventions may involve things like sticky traps or an active infestations. I encourage you to do a 50% isopropyl alcohol with water spray. This works best when compared to insecticidal soaps or things of that nature. You want to apply this once a week until the active infestation is eliminated. I hope this helps, but like I said prior, we're going to do future courses on pest management. So be sure to include the pests that you're currently encountering down in the discussion. This will help me make videos curated towards you and your issues and make sure that you get the most benefit out of my courses. 8. Fertilizer: One thing to take into consideration, it's fertilizer. Fertilizers used to provide nutrients. And if we're growing and soil, we don't necessarily need to concern ourselves with fertilizer as much in hydroponics systems and future courses that will do, we will discuss fertilizer in more depth. But if you're using fresh soil, then this is not of concern as long as that soil is less than nine months old, meaning has been grown in for less than nine months. The nutrients provided is more than enough. If you've decided to reuse old soil for either environmental or just budget saving purposes, you may want to consider fertilization. The key here is to use a liquid fertilizer. Here's an example of what that looks like. This is an all-purpose. You can also get a bloom formula. If you're growing herbs or leafy greens, I would encourage you to use all-purpose. All-purpose is higher and nitrogen which will provide the plant with more green, lush growth. If you're choosing to grow root vegetables or something that fruits and flowers such as cucumbers, peppers, or tomatoes. You want to go with a bloom formula that's going to be higher and phosphorus and potassium. But like I said, future courses are going to go over different nutrient deficiencies you may encounter and how to solve them in your indoor system. So long as you're fertilizing every time we're watering in an old soil system, he should be just fine. The use of liquid over a slow-release, granular or just a compost. Brahmin caste or anything of that nature is going to provide you adequate nutrition quickly. If we are using granular slow-release or a compost from a cast or manure mix, we tend to see that the rates in which fertilizer is released or nutrients is released to the plant is lower. This is because if the soil becomes too dry, then the microbial activity begins to slow down. Microbes are responsible for nutrient cycling, which makes those nutrients into bioavailable forms for the plant. The opposite is true if the soil becomes too moist over saturated soil results in anaerobic condition. This again results in the die off of beneficial bacteria that's needed to help cycle nutrients and make it bio-available. Now the thing with liquid is that it's able to deliver nutrients and a bioavailable form immediately to the roots. This is why for beginners, experts and anyone looking for great results, I encourage them to go with liquid. Now of course, if you don't want to ship water, you could always get a dehydrated diversion of these or granular that's dissolved in liquid. This is all the same, so long as what's being provided to the plant is solubilized in water, you will get the same result. So like I said, don't get too excited about fertilizer. If you're growing in new soil, you should be just fine. 9. Final Project: Now let's look at our actual course assignment. This is going to involve you guys showing me your indoor setup. I want to see what container you used in y, what type of soil you chose to go with, and specifically what seeds you chose to grow, how many, how you're watering and how you're fertilizing them. Be sure to include the type of light you purchased or why you purchased that lighter using that light. And of course, any issues that you are encountering. The next course is going to be troubleshooting nutrient deficiency, pest infestations, and other issues you may see when you're growing indoors with swell, you're able to post your photos down below. It will help me make content curated specifically towards you guys and the issues you're having. But I'm super excited for you guys to start. I think you're really going to enjoy indoor growing because it's going to save you a ton of money and bring joy and happiness into your life. Thanks for watching.