An easy place to start with your propagation adventures is African violets. They propagate easily from leaf cuttings. Simply snip a leaf off (with a bit of the petiole) and place in potting soil.

PC: Leslie F. Halleck

It is important to keep even moisture when rooting African violets.

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When starting seedlings indoors for your outdoor garden, you must prepare the seeds early enough to plant outside at the optimal time. Refer to your seed packets for seed timing, depth, and spacing instructions. Sometimes, these instructions are in the inside of the packet.

Know that your climate is unique and you may need to plant earlier or later than your seed pack recommends, based on your first and last freeze dates, and how warm your summer temperatures get.

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When you grow orchids indoors, you'll need to pay attention to their temperature preferences. Orchids tend to fall into warm-, moderate-, or cool-temperature categories.

Dendrobium orchids fall into the cool temperature loving orchids category. This means daytime temperatures between 60°F and 70°F (15–21°C) and night temperatures between 50°F and 55°F (10–13°C).

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When growing plants indoors, it is critical to understand how temperature affects your crops and how to manipulate it to improve your yields. I monitor the temperature and humidity closely in order to provide the correct conditions for each crop to thrive and produce.

Use a thermometer with a humidity gauge to keep an eye on ideal growing conditions.

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Watts tell you how much energy your lamp is using and how expensive it may be for you to run the lamp. You can use watts to estimate the size or quantity of lights you may need. While a lamp can seem very powerful because it uses many watts, if it is not efficient, it may convert too much of that electricity into unwanted heat instead of light.

If you base your lighting choices purely on wattage, you may end up with an unnecessarily large electricity bill and a lot of wasted energy in the form of unwanted heat.

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There are a few tricks to growing great cucumbers indoors. Cucumbers are day-neutral, and will flower and fruit under a variety of photoperiods and you can grow them successfully with anywhere from 12 to 18 hours of light.

If you’re growing cucumbers inside a grow tent and temperatures are warmer during the day, be sure night temperatures are cooler. Cucumbers can handle warm conditions, but perform best at temperatures between 70°F and 75°F (21–24°C). Keep plants consistently watered at all times to avoid blossom end rot.

Unless you happen to have bees buzzing around in your house or grow tent, you're going to have to do some hand pollination on your cucumber plants. Use a small paintbrush to transfer pollen from male flowers to female flowers.

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Some seeds are more difficult to germinate than others because they have a very hard, protective seed coat. While most annual vegetable seeds do not require any special preparation for germination, seeds of some natives, perennials, and fruits require a bit of extra work, whether soaking, scarification, or stratification.

Research the plant you want to germinate to determine whether it needs any chitting, scarification, or dry or moist stratification to germinate successfully.

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Temperature can trigger flowering in some plants. As temperatures cool, respiration slows and sugar storage increases in some plants. Warming temperatures, after this period of cold, can break the dormancy.

Temperature also influences fruit set, fruit ripening, flavor, and even flower color and size.

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