A few environmental factors will influence your success with indoor bonsai. Light, of course, is a big one. Most woody plant species that are trained as bonsai need more light than they would typically get with ambient indoor lighting. A single spotlight LED, properly placed, can help your bonsai thrive.

Most woody bonsai won't survive indoors for long, especially if they don't have lots of bright light (normally they'd be outdoors in a sunny location). Adding a grow light for your bonsai is a must.

Certain tropical plants can also serve well as trained bonsai. These tropicals will be better suited to living indoors year-round, but you will still need supplemental light for many types unless they are low-light plants.

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The critical photoperiod for female cannabis plants is about 12½ hours, with about 13 hours for male plants. A traditional lighting regimen to bring plants into flower is 12 hours of dark followed by 12 hours of light.

The dark period must not be interrupted with any light, and it typically takes two weeks under this photoperiod regimen for plants to bud. You will need an enclosed growing space such as a grow tent, a sealed closet space, or a grow room.

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Aquaponic systems, or aqua gardens, combine hydroponic growing and aquaculture, or fish farming. Plant roots are suspended in a grow bed. Fish and other aquatic animals inhabit a tank with a gravel bed at the bottom.

Some aquaponic gardens are very large and must be sited outdoors or in a garage, but you can place a mini aqua gardens on your counter top. Don’t forget the grow lamp so your herbs or houseplants can grow vigorously!

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Thyme is a must have herb for your indoor kitchen garden, but it favors longer periods of light. Thyme will produce more essential oils under longer days (and longer photoperiods delivered with grow lamps). BUT, longer days also encourage flowering - and what you want to harvest is the foliage. So it's good to balance out your indoor lighting periods. You can grow thyme under 12 to 13 hours of light to delay flowering, but you may have slower foliage growth - or commit to keeping flowers pinched regularly and harvest leaves regularly under longer photoperiods of 14 to 16 hours.

In the outdoor garden, thyme needs to be in full sun with 6 to 8 hours of direct light. Indoors you can maintain healthy thyme indoors using cool-spectrum HO T5, CFL, or LED lamps.

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I have staged growing areas throughout my home and garage. For edible or flowering plants that need consistently cooler room-temperature growing conditions, I use focused plant lights in living areas, and plant shelves with fluorescent or LED lamps in other spare spaces.

This corner shelf unit, built out of some recycled cedar raised garden beds, houses plants that need to come inside for the winter, tropicals, orchids and other bloomers that aren’t flowering, seasonal herbs…and of course plants I haven’t found a place for yet.

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Some seeds, such as lettuce, and root crops such as beets, can be direct seeded into their final container. Root crops, such as beets, do not transplant well and can be stunted if you try to grow them in a small pot and then move them to the garden.

Just make sure to manage moisture and soil doesn’t stay too soggy in the container if you sow seeds directly into pots.

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Incandescent lamps are frequently the first choice of new indoor gardeners, as well as those who want to grow an individual plant or a small collection of plants. While you can keep standard foliage and some easy-care bloomers growing with an incandescent grow lamp, it is the least efficient and effective option.

The low output of usable light and high output of unwanted heat makes an incandescent lamp a less-than-desirable choice for growing any sort of edible crop, especially those that produce fruit.

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An LED lamp is a semiconductor that produces light when electrical current passes through it. This is solid-state lighting, as opposed to lamps that use electrical filaments and gases to produce light. This solid state can make LEDs a longer-lasting, more efficient choice. LEDs are lightweight and don’t emit a lot of heat, which is very important in a controlled growing environment.

Some indoor growers still use LEDs only as a supplement to other forms of HID lighting, newer advances are making LEDs a good consideration for primary plant lighting, especially in intensive indoor food-production operations that use vertical farming. You can also use LEDs to lengthen photoperiod during the shorter and darker days of winter, or shift easily between vegetative and flowering stages of plant growth using spectrum-specific LEDs.

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