Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
winspiff

Novice to Use Sunroom for NEW year-round kitchen garden

winspiff
11 years ago

Hi Everyone,

I posted this to the regional forum but I think it should have been here. I really could use some help because I think some of the plants I'm interested in have different climate demands, so I may need to think about which ones I'd want in one location versus another.

I'm looking for a bit of advice on starting up a year-round edible garden in a sunroom. I have limited experience with planting (very good at killing plants) but a year-round garden is something I've wanted to do for some time.

Set-up:

- The primary room I'm considering and I think would work faces south and is L-shaped. The attached picture is of the bottom of the L. The southern window wall (bottom of the L) is 10'10". The western window portion is 5'7.5". Its depth, to the crook of the L, is 4'7".

- You cannot see it in the pictures, but the eastern wall (or the side of the L) is full of windows but has a door. The top of the L (northern direction) also has a door. The entire thing looks to be an addition to the outside of a brick home. It has electrical sockets and windows that will open.

Questions: I'm looking for some logistical advice at this point:

- I think at this point I will need to have auxillary lighting for winter months. I was thinking compact fluorescents, but want to try for fixtures that will look nice, too, if you have suggestions on fixtures, how many lights, etc.

- I do want to have something that waters itself if you can suggest a good idea based on the plants I'm looking at, as I usually err too far in one direction or another when it comes to watering.

- From a design standpoint, I want to use the room for more than a garden - I would also like to have space for seating or reading a book (hypothetically).

- What good self-maintaining planters/lighting units are available for window height?

- Even interior design ideas if you are so inclined!

Basically, I hope to draw upon your experience with what you've found would work well in this type of situation.

If it helps, I've brainstormed a "dream" list of plants I eat often. Not all of them may work themselves into the plan, but I want to try to fit in as many foods as I can:

I think these may require colder temperatures?

Tomato (heirloom?)

Lettuce

Spinach

Rosemary

Thyme

Basil

Carrot

Celery

Broccoli

Garlic

Onion

Asparagus

Peas

Edible flowers

Strawberry

I think these require more heat/humidity?

Oranges (dwarf)

Banana (super dwarf)

Not sure?

Chilis

Cilantro

Other spices?

Bell peppers

Comments (4)

  • winspiff
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Another view

  • karin_mt
    11 years ago

    Do you think you could post a better photo and one that is oriented correctly? That will make it easier to offer suggestions. It sounds like an awesome idea though!

  • cole_robbie
    11 years ago

    You might want to choose between green leafy plants and fruiting plants like tomatoes, and just grow one. They require different temps, light spectrums, and light intensity to do well. It would be easiest to start with lettuce, herbs, and greens.

    If you can afford the price, the best lights right now in terms of quality are digital ballast hid lighting. You'd want metal halide for leafy growth. I would just hang up one big light that is over your head and out of the way. You have to be careful of the heat build-up. You might have to make an exhaust vent to blow out hot air.

    Spiral florescents are my next pick for lights, but you need several of them and they need to be very close to the plants.

  • trianglejohn
    11 years ago

    I think if you had some small shelves that are about as tall as the window sill you could grow plenty. If the shelf ended about 10 inches from the sill the plant would be in the sunshine most of the bright part of the day (assuming its planted in a 10 inch tall pot).

    You would want lights overhead of the plants during the evening when winter days are the shortest. Plenty of plants will survive without the lights but they will barely grow and probably won't bloom and fruit during the shorter days. You could use regular adjustable floor lamps with the bulbs set within a foot of the top of the plants (the closer the better) and either use grow bulbs or fluorescents. Lighting is tricky. People seriously growing under lights use big bulky expensive lamps that won't work well in a home-ey sunroom if you want to also use it as a reading/sitting room. I would at least start out with something simple and expand from there as your experience grows.

    You'll probably have better luck growing a cherry tomato in a pot outdoors in the summer and then bring it indoors for the winter and toss it out when it goes down hill - it may last all season but they usually get disease or insects before March. I can never get regular tomatoes to ripen when I bring them inside but cherry tom's do fine.

    Most of the herbs should do fine except the rosemary - in my experience it hates living indoors.

    Garlic is a seasonal plant that you plant at one point in the year and then harvest half a year later. It is not something that you can harvest off of all year long (there will be a plant but there won't be a bulb). Garlic chives should do fine in a pot indoors though and the flavor is similar.

    Asparagus will be tricky since the plants get 6 feet tall and about 4 feet wide and they pretty much like full blazing sun - I move them to the outside plant list.

    Carrots might work but they take more than one season to size up for me. You could grow seedlings all winter that you could then plant outdoors in the spring.

    Orange trees and other citrus would work and most will stay small when grown outside of the tropics. They can get buggy but if you move them back outdoors in the summer you may not have a problem. Most citrus bloom during the winter or very early spring and then it take all year for the fruit to form and ripen - making them a great winter time crop when no other fruit ready to harvest. They don't need high heat (I keep mine just above freezing!) but they do like higher humidity than what most people have in their homes.

Sponsored
Interior Style by Marisa Moore
Average rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars57 Reviews
Northern Virginia Interior Designer - Best of Houzz 2013-2020!