Hydroponics. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The biggest challenge with a garden blog in a city like St. Louis, of course, is trying to find something to write about when the ground is frozen and there are long, toothy icicles hanging of the power lines. The only thing that makes me a shade less sad during a Midwestern winter is the appearance of seed catalogs in my mailbox in January. But that's a few months off. So...
When I've got a yen for green things, there are always houseplants, yes. Or that's what used to get me through the winter. I'm going to have to get rid of mine thanks to the addition of a spazzy little cat to our household. (She gets into everything. Chocolate poisons more cats than houseplants do, but I'm still not willing to risk it.) I also get busy and forget to water them, which makes me insanely guilty and depressed. I'm sure I'm not alone there.
Terrarriums are a nice, low-maintenance way to get some green into your environment; it is meant to be a tiny, self-sustaining system, and if you put them in the right sort of container, you don't have to worry about cats or dogs eating the plants (or scratching around in the dirt to take a pit stop in your potting soil). Forget the cliche of the algae-infested 70s terrarium in a plastic egg —you can use succulents if you don't want to keep cleaning green scuzz off the inside of the container.
The great thing is, terrariums are trendy right now, you can buy all kinds of cool containers built just for this purpose. It's also possible to just buy a terrarium outright, but the good ones tend to be mucho pricey. There are mass manufactured kits available, though to my eye they look like gerbil cages or repuroposed Sea Monkey aquariums. This kit, put together by a seller on Etsy, is much nicer. You can also look up instructions online and build your own terrarium from scratch; these guys have plans for everything from a simple mason jar terrarium to a full-blown aquarium with frogs. Once you figure out what kind of container you want to use, Etsy is also great source for unusual mosses and succulents.
Another type of indoor gardening that's become more pervasive lately is hydroponics. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically growing plants indoors using artificial light and nutrient-fortified water in lieu of soil. Again, because the demand is high right now, there are all kinds of cool products out there. Worm's Way in Creve Coeur has specialized in hydroponic setups for years, and you can get everything you need in one trip. FarmTek has some rather ambitious setups, including this system, which will make you the envy of all the rabbits in your neighborhood. A store-bought hydroponics system is not cheap, but they are not that difficult to build from scratch. Greentrees Hydroponics has advice on thinking through what kind of system to set up, and what to grow in it. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, and aren't sure how ambitious you are, growing three or four kinds of kitchen herbs in an AeroGarden is a good place to start.
And finally, I wanted to touch on indoor seed propagation. That's actually something you can experiment with in a terrarium, with the proper, small-scale plants of course. It's way too late/early to start vegetable seedlings indoors, but because I have so much flower seed left over from spring (I got way over-ambitious and ordered too much!), I plan to set up a sort of seed-starting laboratory in my new basement, after I move on December 1. Some of these plants are interesting decorative plants, suitable for pots, so they will be easy to deal with once they mature. Many of the seeds require cold stratification, a bit of a rub with sandpaper, or germination in total darkness. I've never quite gotten the hang of how to propagate seeds that require these extra steps, but winter is a fine time to experiment with difficult to germinate seeds, as well as a seed-starting setup. In the past, I've had some luck with metal shelving equipped with cheapie, adjustable shop lights equipped with full-spectrum florescent tubes (not gro-lites). I did not use a propagation mat, but it's probably a good idea for best results (those are available at Worm's Way). Here is a great, easy tutorial on setting up and indoor propagation system. Ultimately, gardening is about experimenting with what works and what doesn't, and there are ways to set up your own test laboratory to to play around with until the ground thaws.
