There’s nothing like the taste of a garden-fresh tomato. That’s something you just can’t get at the grocery store.
But you can get it if you grow your own food in an indoor garden.
Growing fruits and vegetables in an indoor grow tent or grow room means tastier food. It also means knowing exactly what’s going into what you’re eating, controlling the quality of your food, and even experiencing better moods.
Table of Contents
- It’s a Good Skill to Learn
- You Know What’s Going into Your Plants
- Better-Tasting Food
- You Can Control the Quality of Your Indoor Garden
- It’s Good for Your Mental Health
- You Know the Benefits, So Let’s Get Growing!
Here are a few of the greatest benefits of growing fruits and vegetables in an indoor garden.
It’s A Good Skill to Learn
If you’re simply looking for a fun, rewarding hobby, indoor gardening is a great way to pass the time and gain a new skill. It’s also sustainable and eco-friendly! Plus, there’s a lot to learn about patience, acceptance, and letting go of perfectionism when it comes to growing your own garden.
What’s even better is that you won’t just be growing these plants for the heck of it. After you harvest, the best part is cooking with the food you’ve grown and knowing you played a part in the entire process!
If you’re new to indoor growing, you can start small with a compact grow room or grow tent and simple plants that are easier to grow.
-
A 2x4ft HID Soil Complete Indoor Grow Tent System (Price: $779.95) comes with everything you need to grow up to 6 plants. That way you don’t need to worry about piecing the lights, grow medium, climate control, and other equipment necessary to get growing.
- Alternatively, if you do want to put together your own grow space piece by piece, a Yield Lab 32” x 32” x 63” Reflective Grow Tent (Price: $129.95) is a good place to start. This tent will hold 4 to 6 plants and is great for beginning growers or folks who just want to grow the bare essentials.
Once you get the hang of things, it’s a lot of fun to experiment with different fruits, veggies, and herbs. You’ll also be skilled enough to take care of lots of plants at once!
-
The 8x4ft LED Hydro Complete Indoor Grow Tent System (Price: $2,899.95) is an excellent choice for advanced growers who want the benefits of hydroponics and are looking for huge yields.
- If you just need a large tent, the Yield Lab 96” x 48” x 78” Reflective Grow Tent (Price: $229.95) should provide you with more than enough space for all the fruits and veggies you want to grow.
Sustaining ourselves is extremely satisfying. Learning any new skill is mentally stimulating, rewarding, and exciting — but gardening has got to be one of the hobbies with the best payoffs! The fresh, full-tasting fruits and vegetables will make the time spent in your indoor garden incredibly worthwhile.
You Know What’s Going into Your Plants
You may be asking, “Why grow your own food when you can save the time and just buy it at the grocery store like everyone else?” We’re here to tell you exactly why. Growing your own food gives you complete control of the type of soil and nutrients the plants are grown in and, in turn, what you’re putting into your body.
When you grow your own food, there’s no worrying about what’s going into your food! Especially in today’s world of pesticides and genetically modified produce, you never know exactly what went into that tomato or cucumber you got at the grocery store. But you do know exactly what went into the food you grew in your own indoor garden.
You Choose Your Grow Medium
The grow medium you put your plants in has a big impact on your overall harvest.
-
Soil is a great choice that comes with built-in nutrients, and you won’t need to water it as much as other mediums during your plants’ grow cycle.
- Foxfarm Ocean Forest Potting Soil (Price: $18.95) is what we’d recommend for anyone looking to grow with soil. Because it’s made with a blend of worm castings, forest humus, and other organic materials, it’ll ensure your plants get a nice boost.
-
Coco is another, looser option, which allows your plants’ roots to get water and nutrients easily.
- Root Royale CocoPure (Price: $12.37) is great for growers who want to use coco. It absorbs high amounts of water, which you’ll add nutrients to, and creates a healthy growing environment for your plants.
- A mix of soil and coco shavings will give you the best of both worlds, allowing for quick draining of your plants while keeping them safe from nutrient lockout.
You Have Control Over What Nutrients Your Plants Get
Controlling the nutrients your plants get is the key to growing great fruits and veggies. There are base nutrients to help your plants grow better and denser and supplements that promote stronger stems and rid your plants of toxins.
-
Base nutrients help your plants start growing and provide the nutrition necessary for seedlings to flourish.
- Grow Natural - Humboldt Nutrients (Price: $19.95) are great if you want to get your plants started with a nutrient-rich solution.
-
Supplements are great if you want to provide your plants with nutrients that promote rich, healthy growth.
- Verde - Humboldt Nutrients (Price: $15.32) offer nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, and more that promote accelerated, vibrant growth.
Better-Tasting Food
Like we mentioned above, growing your own food means you have complete control over the nutrients your food gets. That means making your plants not only stronger, but tastier, too. The right root stimulators and sweeteners can give you food that tastes way better than anything you could buy at your local grocery store.
-
Room stimulators and boosters promote growth so you get more of the fruits and veggies you love.
- Bloom Natural - Humboldt Nutrients (Price: $17.08) give your plants a phosphorus and calcium boost to help them thrive during the flowering period. They increase the amount of flowering sites on your plants to give you big, flavorful crops.
-
Flavor-enhancing nutrients and sweeteners ensure you get the tastiest possible fruits and vegetables — something you just can’t control when you’re not growing your own food.
- Humboldt Honey Hydro (Price: $35.49) breaks down into sugars and increases your plants’ Brix levels — this means a higher sugar content in your fruit. This sugar provides food for good bacteria and fungi so that they can grow and thrive in your growing medium, which will help your plants grow to their full potential.
You may be surprised by the great, full tastes of fruits and vegetables you grow in your own garden when you give them the right nutrients like these.
You Can Control the Quality of Your Indoor Garden
Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of good vegetables available at the supermarket? When it comes to buying vegetables at the store, you don’t have control over their quality. That’s why indoor gardening can be so beneficial: It gives you complete control over the quality of your garden and your crops!
You’ll know you’re eating the best food because you grew it yourself and created the perfect environment for it. Having your own indoor garden means keeping track of the pH levels and using PPM meters, timers, and controllers to ensure the best possible growing environment.
The environment your plants grow in is an integral part of their health. That’s why it’s great to have control over everything, from the lighting to the humidity to the pH of the soil.
-
The Yield Lab Digital Thermo-Hygrometer (Price: $12.95) is great for keeping track of the humidity and temperature of your grow room at all times.
- In addition, a 24-Hour Programmable Electric Timer Control (Price: $7.95) allows you to control the timing of your lighting or odor control systems on a timed schedule. That will ensure your plants are always getting the perfect light recipe and maintenance at the right times.
Maintaining the right pH levels in your soil is also essential — the pH level will determine how available the nutrients that your plants need to thrive are. If the pH isn’t at an ideal level, your garden can run into nutrient lockout or deficiency.
-
-
A Prestige PH Meter (Price: $19.99) will allow you to easily keep track of your garden’s pH levels.
- It’s a good idea to keep an X Nutrients pH Up/Down Set (Price: $19.95) handy in case you ever find that your soil’s pH is a little off. That way you can easily fix the issue your soil’s pH level needs to be raised or taken down a notch.
-
- Note: The optimal levels for most plants are 5.5 to 6.5!
You typically don’t have control over any of these things when it comes to the food you eat if you’re buying from the grocery store. That’s why it’s really amazing that you can take matters into your own hands by growing your own food in an indoor garden.
It's Good for Your Mental Health
Naturally, growing fruits and vegetables is good for your body because of the delicious, healthy, quality food you harvest. That said, tending to your own indoor garden can also have a great impact on your mental health.
Research has shown that even just looking at green landscapes each day can boost moods and relieve stress and anxiety. As such, you can imagine how beneficial maintaining a whole indoor grow room could be.
The act of gardening not only surrounds you with greenery to give you a bit of relaxation, but also promotes mindfulness. This involves focusing on small acts to reduce anxiety and depression. Some studies have even shown that working with soil can boost your mood because it contains a bacterium that triggers the release of feel-good chemicals like serotonin.
Even if we put science aside, we can all agree that having an activity you can focus on and take your mind off of things each day will feel great and promote better moods. This is especially true once you reach the rewarding payoff of harvesting your own food and cooking it into a delicious meal.
- For more on mental health and growing your own plants, check out our article on The Mental Health Benefits of Indoor Gardening!
You Know the Benefits, So Let’s Get Growing!
By now, you’ve probably already figured out if indoor gardening and growing your own food is right for you. When you factor in all of the benefits that come with growing your very own fruits and veggies, it can be a pretty exciting endeavor to take on.
If you’re now itching to start your own indoor garden with a grow room, grow tent, or greenhouse, you’re not alone! More and more people are turning to gardening each year, and the benefits are clearly abundant.
When you grow your own food, you control the quality and quantity of your harvests, you know exactly what’s in your food, and you eliminate the middleman. Not to mention, it’s really good for both your physical and mental well-being.
Not only is having your own fruit and vegetable garden rewarding, it also allows you to sustain yourself with food you grew yourself. As such, growing your own food indoors will lead to healthier, fresher, better-tasting food!