Growing Squash, Tomatoes, and Cucumbers Indoors

As previously discussed on Well Prepared, indoor gardening is a great way for preppers to maintain a source of food that’s both cheaper and easily accessible. We touched on growing beans and peas as well as growing beets. Today, we’re turning our attention to squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes — three more types of vegetables that are widely friendly to growing indoors.

We’re going to be focused only on specific types that are able to grow inside the best. For cucumbers, this means bush champion, picklebush, spacemaster, midget bush picker, and salad bush hybrid types. Recommended types of squash include bush crookneck, bush acorn, black magic zucchini, butter bush, bush table queen, and bushkin pumpkin. If you’re looking to add some home grown tomatoes to an Italian feast, you’ll want to get micro tom, cherry, elfin, patio, red robin, or tiny Tim tomato seeds.

Regardless of the type of each vegetable mentioned above that you do get, it’s going to require 8 hours of sunlight and a 12 inch by 12 inch pot for each plant. If you’ve got your pot and a place to store it where the plant can get adequate sunlight, you’re ready to follow these steps to having your own home-grown veggies:

1. Fill your plant pots with soil. I’d recommend using a mixture of one part potting soil, one part peat moss, one part compost and one part perlite. You can use a pre-mixed soil though if you prefer.
2. For cucumbers, place stakes in the soil in a ‘teepee’ formation. Most varieties of squash will not need to be staked.
3. Press your finger about ½ inch into the center of the pot.
4. Drop your seed into the hole.
5. Cover the seed with soil.
6. Repeat steps two through five until you’ve planted five or six seeds.
7. Water your plants.
8. Once the seeds have germinated and seedlings have sprouted, cut off all of the plants except the tallest two. You don’t want your pot to become overcrowded.
9. Allow the seedlings to grow side by side until they reach 8 to 10 inches high. Cut off one of the plants so that only one seedling remains in each pot. Don’t pull out the seedling though. Pulling out the seedling could damage the roots of the seedling you choose to keep.
10. Cull mature cucumbers or squash as the plants grow to encourage the plant to give its nutrients to the cucumbers or squash that are still growing and developing.