How to start an indoor garden

If you’re a city dweller, you can still reap the green benefits of live foliage by filling your apartment with indoor plants. Adding living plants to every room in your home is of course a nice decorating touch, but it is also an excellent way to protect the health of your baby while reducing air pollution.

Most people spend up to 80 percent of their day indoors.¹ (It’s likely that your baby spends even more of each day breathing indoor air.) In apartment and condo buildings, this fact is especially notable when the building is “climate controlled,” meaning that it is closed up airtight, and all heat and cooling is supplied through a closed-loop ventilation system—no open windows! With so many sources of VOCs all around us, this can cause indoor air to become more polluted than the outdoor air.

We all know that plants recycle oxygen, so it’s logical that they can cleanse indoor air, but their ability to break down pollutants is especially important and even scientifically proven. In one such study by NASA, various plants were exposed to high concentrations of pollutant chemicals inside sealed chambers. The study found that some plants are more efficient in filtering out toxins than others, but those in the top ten were able to remove 90 percent of the formaldehyde, benzene, and trichloroethylene within twenty-four hours.² The filtering process by which plants break down indoor air pollutants is quite fascinating. Chemicals are absorbed into the plants through the leaves, and bacteria associated with the roots help break down contaminants, which are taken up as nutrients.³ Amazing!

In fact, according to one study, one six-inch houseplant per one hundred square feet of living area will do a good job of filtering out pollutants. And it was found that the more vigorous the plant, the more air it can filter—a good incentive to keep those plants pruned and watered!⁴

To learn more about how plants purify the air, check out How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 Houseplants to Purify Your Home or Office, by B. C. Wolverton (Penguin). This book, based on twenty-five years of research by NASA, describes how common houseplants can combat sick building syndrome and cleanse the home or office of common pollutants.

Healthy Indoor Plants

Indoor plants that are well watered (not too much, not too little) and receive adequate light generally do not need to be fertilized. But if you’d like to provide your plants with a little extra nourishment, be sure to keep it green. Avoid synthetic plant foods and opt instead for organic fertilizers that usually contain fish components and seaweed. They are available in liquid or powder form from any plant nursery.

Indoor Edible Gardening

Indoor decorative plants are beautiful and functional as air filters, but to add to the benefits of your indoor greenery, you might try growing your own indoor organic vegetable garden! This is a terrific way to teach kids about the earth as a provider of nourishment, and it’s great for apartment dwellers or for anyone living in a cold-winter climate who craves the great taste of homegrown food.

When planning an indoor vegetable garden, it’s best to choose smaller plants that take up a limited amount of space, such as carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and radishes. But whatever your chosen crop, here are a few tips to make your garden grow:⁵

To begin, choose a planter that has drainage holes, has at least six to eight inches of soil depth, and will be large enough to hold the full grown produce. It’s best to use a potting soil with a lightweight mix in your large planter to ensure quick water drainage. To further encourage good drainage, you might also place your planter in a tray with an inch of stones lining the bottom. The drained water from the plant will provide a source of constant moisture.

Then choose a location in your home where you’ll place your indoor garden. This is an important decision, because the sunlight in this location will determine the types of vegetables you can successfully grow. For example, root and leaf crops such as carrots and lettuce will grow well in partial shade, but fruit crops need direct sunlight for at least five hours each day. Most plants will do well in a window that faces south and gets lots of sun. You can also supplement natural light with fluorescent lighting during the winter months. ....read more