When winter makes its presence felt, and it begins nipping at your nose and ears, don’t allow the resulting blues to affect your love for gardening.

Just carry your garden inside!

An indoor window garden will boost your and everyone else’s spirits and help keep the gloomy winter feel outside in the cold where it belongs. Also, with sensibly chosen winter plants — some fragrant, some colorful, others edible and flavorful, you’ll be able to enhance your winter menus. Try this wonderful winter gardening remedy today:

Your kitchen windowsill is the perfect place for starting a seasonal, indoor garden. It will sustain your gardener’s soul and warm your heart with perfect seasonings for tasty, nutritious and wholesome soups, broths and stews. The key is to plant timely, healthful herbs when autumn frosts begin to shut down your outside gardening.

Along with versatile herbs like basil, compact dill and Greek Oregano, you can also consider adding thyme, parsley, and coriander. All of these take readily to windowsill gardening, and they are likely to fill your winters with fragrance and pleasant greenery. Those plants also will add flavor and medicinal value to your soups, and they are among the easiest herbs to cultivate — even for those not blessed with a green thumb. They only require regular watering and a few hours of sunlight to grow.

Indoor gardening is not all that difficult. In fact, it is pretty much the same as outdoor gardening. There are even some advantages to indoor gardening over outdoor gardening. Some of the benefits:  you won’t have to worry as much about bugs and insects bothering your plants; you also won’t have to worry about wind, heavy rain, hail, or frost reeking havoc on your garden vegetation.

Winter flowers complement your herbal gardens. Sure to bring a smile to your face and color to the room, flowering indoor plants in your window garden, when tended with a little bit of sunshine, water and right soil-mixture, are great aids bet for beating winter blues!

Perhaps, some eye candy in the form of fresh flowers that are regarded as winter blooms can be your daily delight. Just snip open a seed packet of nasturtiums, pansies or calendulas , place the seeds in pre-prepared potting soil treated with fertilizer mix and peat moss next to or along with your herb containers.

Some care concerns, such as the basic rules of maintaining plants, are different in indoor gardening than in a regular outdoor setting.  Since plants won’t get the sunlight they do outdoors, lighting is essential. You need to know roughly how much light your selected plants will need. So, it’s best to pick plants that only need medium to low light, such as ferns or Philodendrons, unless you plan to supply artificial lighting. If you buy a plant already growing, wherever you get it probably has better lighting than your house so you will need to “condition” your plant and gradually reduce the light it receives. Once you get the plants to your windosill, make sure to rotate them at least every other day, thereby encouraging upright growth.

How often you water depends on what type of plant you have. Make sure the water can drain out of the bottom of the pot and try to use water that is not much colder or warmer as the temperature of the room. Also, to ensure healthy plants, pay attention to temperature in your house. A 10-15 degree temperature shift won’t hurt any plants, but rapid changes could damage their health.

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