Aron McInnes grows peas, beans, cucumbers, spinach, lettuce and dill indoors in his aquaponics grow bed. (Submitted Photo/ Aron McInnes)

By Ronald Quaroni

Green Thumbs

“I have fresh greens all year long”: Prince Albert gardener encourages winter growing

Nov 9, 2019 | 12:00 PM

A fresh bite of juicy tomato, the crunch of harvested salad greens: these are not your typical winter fare items in Saskatchewan. That is unless you’re Prince Albert’s Aron McInnes, a member of the Prince Albert Parkland Permaculture Guild.

In a recent Facebook post he regarded winter as a good time of year for gardeners to stretch their horticultural wings.

“Anything you can grow outside, you can grow inside,” Aron McInnes told paNOW. “I’ve got fresh greens all winter long.”

So where to begin though if you’ve never grown vegetables inside your home?

A good potting soil, he explained, is the right place to start. From there, prospective growers can plant seeds that perform well indoors near windows.

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“Salad greens work really well, tomatoes. Potatoes do really well, you just need to have a bucket and they will keep growing,” he said.

Other than windowsills, it can be tough to access enough light for plants to flourish. If you want to up your garden game, invest in some LED lighting.

“Nowadays we can run LED lighting very cheaply, you can purchase and use it all season long without it being an overly expensive thing to do,” McInnes explained.

Besides the fun of seeing vegetables and plants growing, he noted winter isn’t a cheap time to buy produce at the store. Factoring in the cost of the extra electricity, which McInnes said is minimal, growing your own vegetables can also be cost effective.

“It’s an expensive time of year to buy fresh produce in the store, so being able to grow it is very cheap,” he said.

This year McInnes is dabbling in making biochar, a process of partially burning wood to make it very porous. The biochar, according to McInnes then holds onto moisture and nutrients much longer than regular soil.

Most of all McInnes said it’s important for people to experiment and to find out what works best in their homes.

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Ron.quaroni@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @RonaldQuaroni