Growing Herbs And Vegetables Indoors Can Be Done - With Limits

Every spring, my fingers used to turn green with envy.

I would watch as grocery stores sold potted herbs and bedding plants. I would read the Sunday newspaper's gardening tips. I'd listen as friends discussed peat moss, tomato starts and fertilizer.

Even though my gardening experience was limited to trying to grow tulips in my parents' yard as a child, the smell of fresh plants and the feel of damp soil have always appealed to me. I felt sure growing herbs and vegetables would be something I would enjoy.

Gardening, however, seemed impossible. I live in a small Capitol Hill apartment with no yard, no outdoor patio, no balcony, not even access to outdoor window boxes. I have fantasized about building an indoor greenhouse but realize I barely have space for furniture, let alone a glass structure.

But while I lack all the usual gardening spaces, I do have large windows that face west and south. I live on the top floor, so few buildings or trees obstruct my flow of light. I know others have used flower pots and other containers to grow vegetables and herbs on patios.

Wouldn't the same principle work for a garden indoors?

The answer, local gardening experts say, is yes - a hesitant yes.

Many garden shop owners, books and crop experts talk enthusiastically about raising crops in containers, outdoors. When it comes to growing herbs and vegetables indoors, their enthusiasm wanes.

"It's real tough," says Holly Kennell, a Washington State University cooperative extension agent. "We don't really recommend trying vegetables indoors at all."

She and other gardening experts list the obstacles:

-- Light. Even big windows that face south or west may not provide enough sunlight. Vegetable plants require at least six to eight hours of light, up to five times as much as houseplants. Though artificial lights can help plants grow, they add to an electricity bill.

On long summer days, there may be enough light. But often the sun beating against windows is so intense that leaves, particularly on herbs, can burn.

-- Space. It's easy to fit seedlings on even a small window sill. But as plants grow, they require larger containers. One tomato, onion or pepper plant, for instance, eventually needs a 10-inch pot. Five-gallon containers are recommended for cucumbers or squash.

-- Water. Herbs and vegetables need more water indoors than they're likely to require outdoors. Clay pots are particularly troublesome, Kennell says, because they dry out soil too quickly.

-- Low yields. Lack of light and humidity means fewer crops. An indoor garden is unlikely to replace trips to the grocery produce department.

Despite all these arguments, many experts say that if you're an apartment dweller with a yen for growing edible plants, well, it doesn't hurt to give it a try.

Kennell confides that she has fulfilled a desire for early-spring basil by sowing an 85-cent packet of seeds in a pot indoors.

The leaves, harvested a few weeks later, gave her enough basil to season several suppers.

"Of course, you have to be realistic," says Jerry Addington, horticultural specialist at the Indoor Sun Shoppe. "You're not going to wind up with bushels of tomatoes.

"But there are other reasons to try growing edibles indoors. It's fun, and it puts you in touch with the plant-growing process. It's educational for children who live in the city and maybe think tomatoes are produced in a factory in Chicago."

Last year, that line of thinking prompted me to try growing herbs and vegetables in my apartment. I began in mid-March with a handful of garlic chive seeds from a co-worker's garden, and planted a variety of herbs as well as tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers from seed.

I let the seeds germinate on my refrigerator. After the seedlings pushed their way through the soil, I moved them to windowsills and gradually into 3-inch, 5-inch and ultimately 10-inch pots.

I made regular trips to garden shops for potting soil, new pots and fertilizer, and eventually wound up with so many plants that I gave tomato starts to several friends.

My harvest was not large. Besides fresh basil, mint and oregano, I wound up with a couple dozen small tomatoes, about a dozen cucumbers and a handful of peppers. But in mid-November, when most outdoor gardens were falling apart, my plants were still bearing fruit. On Christmas Eve, I was still stirring flavorful home-grown tomatoes and green pepper into risotto.

Sure, the effort was costly, probably at least $75, though I stopped keeping track of the money around mid-May. Yes, I continued to buy vegetables. But the greenery added to my apartment and the joy of watching my seedlings grow into 3-foot-tall plants made the effort worthwhile.

This year, I am attempting even more crops, including eggplant, beets, onions and lettuce.

Such efforts show that while gardening indoors is difficult, it's not impossible.

WSU extension agent Kennell says that if you have good southern and western light in your apartment, you probably can grow a small crop of leaf lettuce, mustard greens and mesclan (a salad mix), as well as herbs such as basil, dill, chives, cilantro and parsley. She also suggests trying green beans, peas and radishes.

Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are more difficult, but Addington, of the Indoor Sun Shoppe, notes that one customer has gotten jalapenos from the same indoor plant for three years. "And he brought the peppers in to prove it."

Joyce Kelly, assistant manager and seed buyer for the Seattle Garden Center in the Pike Place Market, routinely hands customers an information sheet on herbs that can be grown indoors. She also encourages the many downtown high-rise dwellers who drop by the shop to use their imaginations.

"Part of my job is to empower people who have the interest to try more difficult crops," she says. "If you want to grow squash indoors, well, it might not succeed. But give it a shot."

Even if you have an interest in indoor gardening, you may be unwilling to put so much time and effort into something that produces so little success. Kennell suggests some alternatives.

Ask an apartment landlord or manager for permission to convert part of the yard outside your building into an herb garden or lettuce garden bordered by attractive flowers.

Neighbors who have yards might be willing to share space as well, in exchange for a bushel of vegetables, Kennell says.

When Kat Maybury and Joe Calhoun moved to Seattle two years ago, they hoped to rent a house with a backyard garden. Housing prices confined them to a one-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment, but that didn't stop Maybury's determination to garden.

She noticed a square patch of land, overrun with weeds, in her apartment building's parking lot and asked a maintenance manager if she could dig it up. The manager thought the patch was little more than concrete, but Maybury discovered healthy soil, made fertile by years of falling leaves.

Last spring, she planted flowers, lettuce, spinach, broccoli and basil, and quickly learned that while the patch was too shady for vegetables, the flat asphalt roof of the parking garage adjacent to it received plenty of sun. This year, she is using the patch for flowers and has placed containers with green peppers and herbs on the garage roof.

Other tenants have noticed. This year, many are filling the roof with container crops of their own.

"It would be wonderful," Maybury says, "to see the entire roof covered with fresh herbs and vegetables."