‘Indoor Kitchen Gardening’

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• Growing Edibles Indoors Can Add To Your Garden's Harvest

  Gardening is a great pastime, but in a northern climate like Wisconsin’s, it takes a little creativity to get as much of a harvest as might be hoped for. One solution is to grow some edibles indoors.

  Elizabeth Millard and her partner, Karla Pankow, farm at Bossy Acres, a 100-member community supported agriculture farm in Minnesota that provides seasonal produce to members and area restaurants.

  “We are farmers, but we live in the Midwest, and that kind of limits the amount of growing you can do outside,” Millard said.

  Being so aware of those limitations, Millard experimented with ways to work around them and wanted to share what she learned with others. The result is her book, “Indoor Kitchen Gardening: Turn Your Home Into a Year-round Vegetable Garden.”

  When Millard and Pankow first started their farm, it was late in the season, so instead of waiting until the next growing season, they got started indoors.

  “We started thinking about the different things that we could get started growing that would continue into the months ahead. We started in July, and by about October or November we had our whole house full of edibles like lettuces, and herbs and microgreens. It was so much fun, so we decided to just keep it going and take it right into the next season,” Millard said.

  While houseplants are a common indoor feature, they are seldom edibles. Millard speculated that it may be because people separate having houseplants from gardening. She said that there may also be an idea that only a few plants that do well outdoors can make a successful transition inside. Millard also thinks it may be a misperception of how hard it might be to grow outdoor “crops” indoors.

  Regardless, Millward said she found that “a lot of these plants are pretty, like microgreens, as well as being incredibly useful.”

  Millard said that once you think creatively about what to grow indoors, it also makes sense to expand the idea of where plants belong. While the kitchen is a natural location for edibles, she said that even a small home has a lot more possible spots to fill with plants.

  “I think when you begin to look around your house, you’ll start to see that there are so many places where the light might come in, or there might be a spot for a bookcase, or you can just kind of tuck these away in little parts,” Millard said.

  Millard hopes that people will choose an edible or two and make room for it indoors.

  “It’s a fun and happy experiment, so you might as well try it. You can have houseplants, but eventually eat them, which is always nice!” Millard said.