Growing Fruit Bearing Plants Indoors
It is possible to grow many fruiting plants indoors, ideally in a conservatory, but you can also grow them with care on a sunny windowsill. The joys of dwarf tomatoes, chilli and bell peppers, and aubergines (eggplant), as well as a wealth of colorful citrus fruits, all await the indoor gardener.
Small citrus trees look spectacular in a sunroom (conservatory), or a very sunny living or dining room. Their shape lends itself to quite formal rooms -- think, of elegant orangeries with stone columns and wooden planters filled with specimen orange and lemon trees. Ideally, the containers should be equipped with carrying handles so that the trees can be easily moved to spend the summer outside and winter inside.
Citrus fruits are not difficult to grow given the right conditions. As with most plants, you need to consider the growing conditions. Think of places where they flourish best: in Florida and California, and the countries around the Mediterranean, where they grow on dry, sunny hillsides. When it rains, they are soaked for a short time, but the water then drains away easily. Create the same conditions for your pot-grown varieties, and never let them get waterlogged. Feed them with sequestered iron occasionally and check for scale insect and whitefly.
Kumquats (Fortunella japonica) are attractive small evergreen trees that produce fruits like miniature oranges. The flowers are deliciously scented and the fruits can be frozen whole and used instead of ice cubes in cold drinks. They also look festive if used as a temporary top-dressing under winter hyacinths for a dining-table arrangement, with a few of the shiny green leaves pushed in between for glorious contrast. Keep the leaves of all citrus plants clean by wiping them occasionally. They should also be given a regular foliar feed during winter.
Dwarf tomatoes are happy indoors if they are given sunlight, tomato food and plenty of water.They will ripen even if they fall off their stems while they are still green. The flavor and smell will remind you of how tomatoes should be, and, if they are grown from organic seed and without the use of pesticides, they are very beneficial to your health. Once fruiting, they will need staking as the bunches of tomatoes become too heavy for what is rather a spindly little plant.
It would be possible, in fact, to grow a complete ratatouille of tomatoes, aubergines (eggplant) and sweet (bell) peppers, provided you can give them the sunlight needed to ripen them. Aubergines (Solanum melongena) are not perhaps the most beautiful of plants, although they have interesting sharp prickles on the backs of their leathery leaves. A small, white, star-shaped flower produces the shiny fruit. This will also need staking, the parent plant being too small to support its ungainly offspring. Mist the leaves regularly.
Sweet peppers (Capsicum annuum Grossum Group) are easy to grow, given high humidity and warmth. Mist the flowers daily and pinch out the growing rips of young plants to encourage them to bush out. Members of the same family, but with a dramatically different taste, are the hot chilli peppers (C. annuum Longum Group), which are highly decorative, with their pendent cone-shaped fruit.
Other edible plants to grow indoors include oyster and button (white) mushrooms. These are not as difficult to grow as you might think. Growing methods involve creating warm moist conditions for the oyster mushroom spawn to take on its growing medium, usually some form of recycled wood product, then shocking it into thinking that winter has arrived by putting it into a refrigerator for a week or so. Once the fruiting cycle is established, the little oyster mushrooms will need a cool, light, humid place and will grow into the most beautiful shapes.
This makes a spectacular and original display for a table centerpiece, but be aware that some people are allergic to the mushrooms or the spores produced by them (or to both). Button mushrooms are easier to grow if you have a warm room somewhere large enough for a 33 lb (15kg) bag of potting mix. They do not fit so easily into the stylish interior category, but are quite irresistible for the adventurous indoor gardener. Specialist companies will supply all the information needed to grow mushrooms.
Having suggested all the ingredients for a home-grown vegetarian meal, perhaps we should include a few strawberries to finish the meal with something sweet. Alpine strawberries (Fragaria vesca) like to trail or creep, and need plenty of bright light. The leaves and flowers are pretty in their own right, and the sweet fruit is an added bonus. Strawberry plants would make a delightful decoration for a summer dining table.