Indoor Herb Garden: Tutorial

My partner and I are indoor farmers more so than outdoor. We rent one side of a very pleasant duplex that gets almost zero light in the yard because of the massive trees in our neighborhood. This is added to the difficulties of simply living in Eugene Oregon where the sun is a coy mistress to the ever-bearing clouds and moisture. I am studying Culinary and my love of food and plants comes together in my next project of my own indoor herb garden. I am going to document my garden so that you too can follow along and reap the benefits...and maybe learn something about sustainable self sufficient living (I am also sending a kit to my family in Idaho in hopes that they follow along as well)

I did not want to go buy tiny plastic germination cups or whatever. I have had them before and they have promptly broken and ended up thrown away and are now filling space in a landfill somewhere. I used newspaper that had been sitting around for a few months waiting to be folded into one of my projects or to become worm food. I see two benefits to making cups from newspaper. It's a material I am reusing, and it is quick to biodegrade. I am going to use the short lifetime of newspaper to my advantage later on when I transplant. But for now it will serve as perfect dirt holders.

I folded a piece of newspaper in half and rolled it around a can of soup and folded over two inches of one end, creating a little round newspaper cup. This is not the most supportive a structure until it has dirt in it. Make your paper cup, fill it with dirt and set it in a tray to keep your cups in. A tray serves as a way to carry all your cups and to catch water that escapes from the bottom. Our homemade cups have a natural opening in the bottom but if you are using plastic or any other material make sure your cup has drain holes in the bottom.

There are a million types of dirt you can use. We use foxfarms potting soil. And we reuse it each season by collecting the already used dirt into a kiddy pool and amending it with different fertilizers. We use a lot of compost, worm casting, and bat guano. This process is why we started our worm box to cut out some of the products we buy and can be making ourselves. We have a friend who owns caves with bats in them and we get the guano for next to nothing. We buy new soil rarely and usually only when all the soil we have is in use. We retire the soil at the end of fall. We mix the old soil and fallen leaves together and spread it into the outside flower beds.

You may choose to germinate your seeds individually. I am beginning a kit of twelve culinary herbs and they each come with specific instructions. I find these are much more important when planting outside and not so much in the controlled environment of the house. I planted several seeds in a finger sized hole. A different cup for each herb. If you label the newspaper with a pencil the letters won't run or disappear but they will fade a bit eventually. Place your cups in a tray to collect runoff and place them in a sunny area like a window ledge or a table near a window. We have a bay window I turned into a garden area because it's on the sunniest side of the house. 

Once you have planted your seeds and buried them, water them so that the pots are very damp and a little water runs out the bottom. Now comes the most important part. Do not water them again until you not only see sprouts but the dirt is Entirely dry. The seeds need to open up to that moisture and then reach out for it as it dries away. This struggle is important in indoor growing. Controlled struggles encourage your plants to flourish just as exercise makes us stronger.