When winter strikes, you no longer need to stop gardening just because the weather gets cold. In fact, you can garden year round with no regard whatsoever to the seasons, as long as you make the preparations to garden inside your home or any other environmentally-controlled location. While there are many frost-resistant vegetables like beets, carrots, and cauliflower, new advances in gardening techniques make maintaining indoor vegetation easier than ever. Indoor vegetable gardening is growing in popularity, and it allows you to have fresh veggies to eat all year round.

Pots, Beds, and Other Containers

You can practice indoor vegetable gardening in a variety of ways, and it has some inherent benefits over normal winter gardening or standard gardening itself. Most importantly, indoor vegetable gardening doesn't restrict your choice of vegetables to grow during a particular season. You can grow strawberries, carrots, tomatoes, and potatoes all at once, and they will be delicious as ever. Imagine harvesting fresh tomatoes or strawberries in December right from your own home. By modifying your home or building a new greenhouse out back (which isn't as hard as it sounds), you can enjoy any vegetables (or fruits) whenever you want them.

Home vegetable gardening does unfortunately take a great deal more work than normal gardening. That's because while you are able to control the environment from the harshest effects of winter, rain, and drought, you have to make sure to maintain the environment completely on your own. That means that if you take vegetation inside with indoor vegetable gardening, you have to make sure that your plants get enough water and that they also receive proper lighting. Normal incandescent bulbs don't emit all the proper types of light to help plants grow. Neither do fluorescent bulbs by themselves. You'll need to purchase special light bulbs to give your plants the necessary light.

Indoor vegetable gardening can be a more expensive and work-intensive approach to gardening, but you get the benefits of being able to grow any vegetables or fruits during any point of the year, and you never have to worry about the weather becoming harsh enough to seriously threaten the vitality of your plants. If you love gardening, then it is well worth the extra money to be able to cultivate plants year round, and if not, then you may want to stick with normal, exterior gardening. Regardless, indoor vegetable gardening is the most efficient and safest method of gardening.