With winter here and it being an especially harsh one for many regions, it may seem like the planting season is a long ways away. But it doesn’t have to be. Part of having a wooden shed is owning a space where you can grow plants year round. These dwellings make excellent growing houses or greenhouses to get plants going prior to transplanting them in the spring and summer.
What You Need To Know About Planting In Wooden Sheds
First, it does take some preparation. You want to make sure your shed is well insulated. This keeps warm air from escaping and cold air from taking its place. Remember, plants like warmth, otherwise they freeze!
Next, you will want to set up some grow lights. Sunlight is preferable, but in the colder months it just isn’t feasible to rely on sunshine. Grow lights allow photosynthesis to occur, in some cases more consistently and beneficially than the sun!
Finally, you should have the right sized planter boxes or pots, with the right combination of grow lights for the right number of hours a day. If you put the lights on all the plants 24/7, they will have too much and won’t grow properly. Not enough light and they will die. You want to find the balance for each one, as per its best practices.
Thankfully, produce tends to be pretty hearty. Here are the ten best vegetables and fruits to grow in your wooden shed to get ready for a plentiful spring planting.
Tomatoes - Tomatoes are probably the most popular fruit to grow because they pretty much tend to themselves. They are also absolutely delicious on the vine, holding a flavor you won’t find in a supermarket. Just remember they need a lot of room to spread out.
Avocados - Avocados can be a hard plant to get right the first time because if you don’t grow them correctly they can end up with hard, tasteless fruit that never properly ripens. The best starting point comes from specially harvested seeds you buy at your local nursery, which can be sprouted in a wet environment to start your plant. From there, you can grow these gorgeous, delicious fruits easily, it just takes a couple tries sometimes to get started.
Carrots - Because carrots are a root vegetable they are often ignored when people think of planting them indoors. But a well insulated wooden shed is an awesome environment for them. What you need is a large, clay pot where you can stack a lot of loose soil that drains well. This gives your carrots the room to thrive, the depth to grow and the ability to properly utilize water and light. They will need around five hours of grower lights per day, so be prepared to give them at least that much. Otherwise you will end up with stumpy, wrinkled carrots no one wants to eat!
Mushrooms - Mushrooms are amazingly easy to grow thanks to them being a fungus. After all, you grow fungus all the time on accident, right? They only take around a month to grow and they don’t require light. In fact, they will grow better the darker and danker an environment is, as long as they still have enough warmth and space to do it. A crate or even laundry basket will grow them well, as they let in the arid air that they thrive on.
Lettuce - Lettuce takes a little more work than some of the others on this list because the watering process is a bit more careful with how they are watered and the way sunlight is filtered onto the leaves. It is one vegetable where you can just put the planter box under a window for a few hours a day and let it shine in through the glass. Otherwise, use a weaker grower light.
Spinach - Spinach is similar, as it only requires weaker light and less water to grow. You could probably grow both types of green together in one box, just don’t crowd them or you risk nutrient theft that leaves one (or both) dying out.
Green Onions - Green onions are a delicious addition to most dishes, giving them a bit more pep without the harsher taste of white or yellow onions, or the sweetness of red varieties. What makes these great to grow is they will sprout a ton of shoots that can be cultivated year round. So give them plenty of space and be prepared to move them in and out of your wooden shed depending on the season.
Bell Peppers - Bell peppers are another shockingly easy vegetable to grow. The trick is learning when they are ready for plucking off the vine, which takes a bit of practice but you will learn to spot it before too long. There is a nice, long growing season and one plant and yield dozens of peppers continually, which makes them a nice, low maintenance plant once you have them started.
Beans and Peas - The first few harvests of these pods will make you think you made a mistake. Don’t worry! With each successive collection they will get better and taste fresher. You need supported wires inside the pot as the vines creep upward and a lot of grower lights and you will have gorgeous beans and peas in a few months.
Radishes - Not everyone is a fan of radishes, but even those who don’t like them will probably agree that they are better when they are freshly grown. They grow fast (within weeks!), are pretty much foolproof even if you have never grown anything in your life and are very good for you. You pretty much plant them and leave them, providing a few hours of light and regular watering without any fancy tricks. Perfect for your wooden shed crop!
Growing fruits and veggies in your wooden shed is easier than you probably think. Why not get your own garden started and ready for the spring today!
