A pole building grow house works a lot like a greenhouse. You control the temperature and moisture to mimic actual outdoor conditions for growing fruits and vegetables. Under the right conditions, there are foods that you can grow throughout the year – provided you monitor and maintain your indoor grow house appropriately.
Try some of these tasty and nutritious foods that require only a bit of care for an experienced grower.
Fruits
Making room for fruit trees shouldn’t be a challenge in a pole barn; a pole barn suits an indoor fruit garden extremely well. The room provided by pole building construction is ideal for growing trees that bear delicious fruit.
Lemons
Grab a 2-3 year old dwarf lemon tree to get started, especially if it’s your first time growing. A tree that’s been nurtured for a few years is more likely to bear edible fruit within the year. You’ll have to place the tree in soil formulated for citrus trees, but as long as you water and let it drain without oversaturating, you should be able to enjoy lemons shortly.
Oranges
Again, dwarf trees are your safest bet for bearing fruit. Give your tree a spacious pot with lots of sun and water it regularly. Be sure to let the soil dry slightly between waterings. Your tree will continually grow, so be ready to repot it when you see the roots pushing out of their current pot.
Vegetables
A pole building is perfect for an indoor vegetable garden. Vegetables need less space than fruit trees, but still demand attention and quality growing conditions in your pole building indoor grow house.
Avocados
Yes, technically they are fruit, but because of their savory flavor, we’re adding them to the vegetable category. Though you can grow avocado plants from the pit of an avocado, it’s a serious undertaking, and you’re more likely to get edible fruit from a dwarf tree. Put sand in the bottom of your tree’s pot and water regularly without letting the soil get soggy. Trees can grow up to 10 feet, so make allowances!
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are fruits, too, but we generally use them alongside vegetables, so we’ll place these in the vegetable category as well. Plant tomatoes from seed every 1-2 weeks to keep your tomato supply going. Water them until the soil is moist, and give every side of them lots of sun.
Mushrooms
Most home supply stores have mushroom-growing kits that make growing fungus easy. Fungus spores don’t germinate like plant seeds, so they need an outside source of nutrition to grow, called a spawn. You can fill a laundry basket with spawn and grow mushrooms, but it tends to be much more labor-intensive.
Herbs
Herbs are fun to grow, look beautiful, and take up relatively little room in your pole building grow house.
Basil
You can start basil from a seed or starter plant. You can water up to once a day in hot temperatures, but be ready to prune the plant when it starts to flower – if you don’t you won’t get the flavorful basil leaves.
Cilantro
Coriander is the seed of cilantro. You can start growing cilantro plants from coriander. Water the seeds then cover them with plastic until they germinate and push against the plastic. Remove the cover, water daily, and keep them in sunlight.
Rosemary
Plant seeds in a coarse sand and potting soil mixture with holes at the bottom of the pot for drainage. Water when the soil’s surface is dry, and keep the plants in a place that receives at least six hours of direct sunlight.
At Sonnenberg gardens in Canadagua NY, there is a FiG building. 30′ tall fig trees, grown in pallet sized pots were kept inside when the weather would have killed them.
Or was it olives?
Vincent ~ Greetings my friend! I checked over the Sonnenberg Gardens website in hopes of finding the answer to figs or olives, but to no avail. It does look like an interesting place to visit though!