Best Tips for Your Indoor Home Garden This Season

Nothing can put a spring in your step and your Mason City home like a fresh, beautiful indoor garden. Indoor home gardens aren’t just possible. They’re fun, room-brightening ways to bring a bit of the great outdoors inside, plus they serve as practical means to grow herbs for your favorite recipes if you're so inclined.

That said, coming up with novel, fun ways to garden indoors can be tricky, especially if it's your first time. Our indoor home garden ideas will help you set up the perfect green space in your kitchen, living room, and elsewhere.

Choose the best home garden plants

When it comes to indoor spring gardening, you have to start by choosing the right plant species. After all, not every budding botanical specimen will thrive indoors, where sunlight is often at a premium.

Good news, though: there are dozens of beautiful, fun plant species that are perfect for your indoor garden. A few examples include:

• Pothos or Devil’s Ivy, which grows vines that can be up to 10 feet long!
• Philodendron, which also grows vines up to 8 feet long
• Prayer plant, which can grow up to 3 feet tall
• ZZ plant, which can grow up to 3 feet tall
• Peace Lily, which goes up to 6 feet tall when fully grown
• Chinese evergreen, which grows up to 3 feet tall
• Tradescantia, which can get up to 3 feet tall

Be sure to do your research before running down to the gardening store and selecting your seedlings. Some indoor plants can be toxic to cats and dogs. If you have a furry friend, be sure to pick plants that won’t make them sick if they nibble.

Think about light sources and indoor gardening kits

No matter which plants you choose to grow inside your Iowa home, they all require some amount of light. But that light doesn’t have to come from the sun! In fact, many of the best indoor home garden plants will do just fine with the right artificial lights. Specifically, you’ll need full-spectrum LED lights that effectively simulate sunshine. You can get these in affordable, easy-to-use indoor gardening kits or separately.

Indoor garden kits are artificial gardens perfectly sized for your countertops or the coffee table in your living room. These days, gardening kits come with automatic watering systems, built-in lights, and timers, all designed to make it easier to bring some green inside.

Gardening kits could be the ideal tools to bootstrap an indoor garden with a minimum of effort, particularly if you don't have a lot of time during the day to tend your budding plants. With one of these gardening kits, you can grow any indoor garden in no time.

Treat yourself to delicious herbs with a windowsill garden

One of the big benefits of having an indoor garden for your Mason City home is easy access to the plants you cultivate. Why not get some practical value out of your garden by planting some useful herbs?

Not only are some of the most common cooking herbs perfect for indoor spring gardens. They’re also fast-growers – in a matter of weeks, you’ll have a full pot of basil, parsley, or rosemary ready to go.

A little setup is required for delicious results, though:

• Start by choosing a handful of small pots. Each herb you grow should have its own pot to prevent root tangling.
• Next, find the ideal place in your home for your herbs to grow. Most herbs need anywhere between 5-8 hours of sunlight. If you don’t have a suitable perch for your indoor herb garden or a spacious sunroom, purchase a few of the above-mentioned full-spectrum LED lights and position them above your herb pots.
• Don’t forget to mark each pod with a marker or a tag in the soil. Your herbs will look remarkably similar to each other in the earliest stages, but each may need different water levels. Don't confuse them – it's just as easy to drown a plant as it is to deprive it of water!

Then place your plants on a spacious windowsill. Bay and bow windows have ample room, but kitchen counters underneath wide sliding windows can also work if they face the sun in the morning or afternoon. Custom garden windows are also another great addition for your home in Mason City that can offer an abundance of sun exposure to help your indoor plants flourish.

For example, bay & bow windows have plenty of space for the herb garden of your dreams. Or consider a smaller setup beneath the light of a double-hung window.

Set up a full-blown indoor greenhouse!

You can also go all out with your indoor spring garden. Why not make it a greenhouse instead of a collection of a few plants? Indoor greenhouses look and smell wonderful. For many, they’re delightful ways to lift the spirit and reinvigorate the senses after the cold, bleak weather of winter. The best places to set up an indoor greenhouse include:

• A glass cabinet
• Your bathroom, which is naturally humid and moist

Separate glass cabinets are better picks if you want to showcase your indoor greenhouse to guests and family members. Plus, smaller cabinets let you choose exactly how much sunlight the plants within receive. However you choose to set up your greenhouse, remember your plants will need lots of water. Ideally, you should set up a small humidifier within the greenhouse cabinet to simulate an appropriate environment for your green friends.

Decorate wall shelves in your home with green plants

Have an empty wall in your living room, dining room, or hall? Make an indoor garden on that wall by installing some basic wood board shelves, then setting up a water propagation garden.

It's less complex than it sounds. A water propagation wall is a series of shelves lined with water-filled cups and bowls. Then, you snip some plant specimens from another garden and place them in their new, watery homes. You can root a lot of plants and water them in this way – just cut a leaf or branch at the base and put it in fresh water to see it grow roots.

When the time comes to choose your plant species, you have a lot of options. A few of our favorites include:

• Herbs like oregano, basil, rosemary, and lavender
• English ivy
• Philodendron
• Purple passion
• Coleus
• Lucky bamboo

Many of these plants will grow quickly with fresh water. Think about going all out and scattering lots of different plant species over your hydroponic shelves for maximum variety!

Decorate your kitchen with hanging plants

One last idea before you go – hanging plants, specifically in your kitchen. A few strategically placed green decorations in your kitchen or around your dining room will really brighten the space up and make each meal prep session that much better.

There are lots of ways you can decorate your kitchen with hanging plants. A living wall of vines or moss, for example, could be perfect for kitchen areas that don’t get a lot of natural light. Or you can set up hanging baskets with plants placed inside them. Treat each basket as a pot, then choose some of the above-mentioned indoor plant species. In no time at all, you’ll have a green wall of beautiful plants adorning your kitchen.

Indoor home gardening isn’t nearly as tough as you might think. Plus, by combining several of the above ideas, you can make your home feel just as ready for spring as you are. Get creative with your combinations, like an herb garden on the windowsill, an indoor garden set up on your counter, and a living wall in your kitchen. The greener, the better!

But many of the best indoor home garden setups will only be possible with clear, energy-efficient windows that let in as much sunlight as possible. If you’re thinking about some home window replacements, Window World’s Mason City location is ready to help – contact us today to learn more about our replacement window options and expert assistance.