Outside garden won't be ready, what can I grow inside?

[GeorgiaTiger]

I'm going to do an outside garden in the Spring, but I have a lot of work to do to get it ready (castor plants, etc., to eradicate). I want to plant SOMETHING so I figured I could grow something inside. Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do inside during the time that I'm waiting on Spring to roll around? I just want to get my hands dirty and get some experience with growing ANYTHING that I can eat.

I really wanna do organic, too, btw. I'm thinking with my unhealthy eating habits, I need to get my act together. Just had a heart scare and have type 2 diabetes so I really need to eat healthier, which is one reason I want to grow my own food.

Any help?

[DownriverGardener]

Hi Allen! Great idea. Once you start gardening, you'll never go back


Are you planning on buying and setting up a grow system? With lights, maybe even ventilation, etc?

[applestar]

Rather than trying to grow things inside, why don't you try container gardening? There have been a number of threads about it and I posted my patio garden photos in one of the threads in the Container Gardening forum.

[rainbowgardener]

Agree with Applestar! Why bother trying to have all the equipment for indoor gardening? You are in GA, you can garden nearly year round. This time of year you might find sales on planters/ containers or look around for creative stuff you can re-purpose.

Right now you could plant beans and you could even still start a tomato plant or two. By early sept, you can start all the cool weather stuff for a fall garden: spinach, onions, lettuce, carrots, cabbage...

One suggestion for the castor beans etc, would be to cut it all down to ground level,* then lay down a bunch of layers of newspaper and cardboard over it and then build a raised bed on top and fill it with soil. (Soak the ground first and then soak the paper/cardboard.) You can plant into the soil you fill the raised bed with and the cardboard will smother out the stuff under it. Then by next year, the cardboard will all break down and disappear. Raised bed should be at least 12" tall.

If you just did one 4x8' raised bed that way, that would give you a good place to get started getting your hands dirty!

*PS be sure you save all the stuff you cut down to be the beginning of your new compost pile. You will definitely want to have one. Browse in our Compost Forum, if you aren't familiar with them.

[GeorgiaTiger]

you don't mean to save the castor bean plants for compost do you?

[Jeremy brua]

I have read carrots grow well indoors. Plus if you have kids they love them. But if you get to work I don't see why you couldnt get some cold plants going.

Good luck!

[rainbowgardener]

Yes, I mean compost the castor bean plants and yes I know they are toxic. The toxins are organic compounds too and they also break down in the composting process.

The toxin, ricin, is mainly (though not 100%) concentrated in the beans/ seeds. If you wanted to be ultra careful about the possibility of some animal getting in to your compost and eating the plant before it was all composted, remove the beans and compost the rest. If you are composting in an enclosed bin, nothing you care about can get to it anyway.

If some tiny uncomposted bits happened to stay in the compost and get planted in the soil, the ricin is poisonous to people not plants. And the plants would not uptake it. Don't eat the compost.

They are big plants. To me it would be wasteful just to throw them out. The plants are much safer breaking down in the compost pile, than they are growing in the yard and OP has apparently had them growing in the yard for sometime.

[GeorgiaTiger]

Don't eat the compost.

This just made me almost spew Coke on my computer...

[GeorgiaTiger]

oops. double post.