I start my own garden seedlings indoors to extend my short Alaska summer growing season. I have quite a few seed starting shelves with LED grow lights that can sit empty during the summer and deep winter months. I have tried using these for growing a few vegetables during the winter instead of attempting to heat my greenhouse when it is below zero outside.
Most gardeners realize that heating a greenhouse during the winter in Northern or high elevation cold climates is just not practical and would be way too expensive. There just isn’t any free heat and not enough light for growing plants in a greenhouse in Alaska all winter. So I have been growing vegetables in my already heated and well insulated Alaska home using my seed starting shelves under grow lights.
I understand that running my grow lights is not free. Buying produce picked green and shipped 2,000 miles from warm climates all winter is not free either and they have no flavor. Even our summer weather can be colder than some warm season plants need or just not long enough and many don’t do well outside up here. A greenhouse is necessary. Cole crops like kale, cabbage, and broccoli, along with Peas, leafy greens and root vegetables can do well outside, but warm season vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers need the warmth inside a greenhouse to prosper. I have had may failures trying to grow some plants outside.
I do have a greenhouse and I also use plastic hoop tunnels to try and conserve warmth for many crops.
Using dwarf varieties that require less space is another way that has helped and some of the newer very dwarf and miniature varieties do very well in pots indoors. I started with small tomato varieties such as Micro Tom, Red Robin, and Tiny Tim. These are cherry and grape size tomatoes that have worked very well for me. I also found a black skinned miniature called Dwarf Mocha's Cherry Tomato that I will be growing this winter.
I keep trying to grow eggplant and peppers outside under hoop tunnels which helped but I never had great results.
Eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables for cooking and I found some that list as suitable for containers such as Patio Baby Hybrid, Pot Black, and Fairy Tale Hybrid. So this year I did find some dwarf pepper and eggplant varieties that I decided to try growing inside.
Many hot pepper plants are small and do well in containers and there are many newer dwarf sweet peppers now too. I am growing Early Jalapeno, Cubanelle sweet pepper, and Mini Belle Red Pepper.
The fruit of these miniature plants are usually much smaller too - but they can be very prolific and make up for size with tons of fruit per plant.
I will probably continue to experiment and try new varieties to find which are best suited for indoor container gardening. Growing fresh food all year long is possible even in Alaska.
