Indoor Growing Guides

Grow the Tropics in Your Living Room

It’s no secret that Vermont isn’t exactly the tropics…but that doesn’t mean there aren’t all manner of tropical plants that we grow both indoors and outside.

Ginger actually loves shade and works really well as a year-round houseplant. The last time I put our potted ginger outdoors in the summer, I managed to kill it with bright sunlight. It wants that dappled understory light, the same light you get through a sunny south-facing window indoors.

Other things like citrus, lemongrass, and even chocolate trees can thrive indoors, too!

Edible Indoor Plants

Some of the best edible indoor plants include plants that thrive in the shade (or will at least tolerate filtered sunlight through a south-facing window) but also need warm year-round temperatures to thrive.

• How to Grow Chocolate Trees Indoors

• How to Grow Lemon Trees From Seed

• How to Grow Lemongrass (Indoors or Outside)

• How to Grow Ginger (Indoors or Outside)

• How to Grow Turmeric (Indoors or Outside)

Fresh Vermont Grown Ginger. This is grown outdoors in the summer months, but you can grow it indoors year round and ginger loves part shade.

Things You Might Need This Week

Whether you’re growing the tropics or not, now’s a good time to cook with and preserve them!

• How to Make Chocolate from Cacao Beans (Homemade Chocolate From Scratch)

• Foraging Wild Ginger

• Fermented Turmeric (Natural Anti-Inflammatory)

• Natural Citrus Seed Pectin for Canning

• 20+ Ways to Preserve Lemons

Making chocolate from scratch with my daughter, from bean to bar

Seasonal Preserving

Recipes to keep your larder full all year round…in season now:

• Grapefruit Marmalade

• Canning Papaya

• Canning Pineapple

Grapefruit Marmalade

This newsletter may contain affiliate links.

Things I’m Loving

• Stark Brother’s Nursery - They carry many varieties of indoor fruit trees, and we’ve purchased a few from them over the years. They’re also a great source for fun berries, like the honeyberry plants we grow, and others like aronia, everbearing strawberry, and edible flowering trees like the redbud trees we ordered from them this year.

• Nature Hills Nursery ~ They carry many of the hard-to-find plants that you just can’t get anywhere, like barberry and hardy kiwi.

• Garden Tower Project ~ We use their really innovative grow tower to garden year-round in a very small footprint.  It works indoors or outside, and can be used with lights or without.

Berkey Filters Update & Corrections

I got dozens of emails about my last post, “What Happened to Berkey Filters?” and I do sincerely appreciate all the feedback, thoughts, corrections, and other options that y’all were kind enough to share. If I missed replying to your specific note, I’m sorry. I did my best, but there were just so many. 

Some had minor corrections, which are always appreciated, and others had other options that they’re using, which I think are important to share widely.  The corrections didn’t change the substance of the issue at all, but I’ll share both anyway:

• Berkey Filters is still in business and is making filters for the international market, but they cannot sell them to US customers.  They have not been able to produce filters for sale in the US for many months now, and have sued the EPA…but it doesn’t seem they’re making any headway, and there’s no resolution in sight.  You can follow the Berkey blog on their actual website for current information, as well as their specific page on information about news releases on this issue. 

• Berkey’s distributors are the ones shutting down, one by one, as they don’t have any product to sell, haven’t for months, and they know there’s no resolution in sight. As Berkey doesn’t sell directly, the distributors were the only way to buy the products.  Some of them are transitioning to other interim options as refill filters to fit in existing Berkeys, namely the Boroux filters I mentioned, which their distributors believe are even better than the originals. This is only helpful if you already have a Berkey filter, and just need filter cartridges to keep it running.

• In Canada, Berkey filters can still be ordered via their distributors there, and one reader shared that they love working with Conscious Water. They’re also available in other countries, check with your local distributor for options.

As to Berkey alternatives, if you don’t already have one of these filter units and want to start filtering your water, readers have shared these filters as comparable options.  I don’t have personal experience with any of these, but other readers are loving them, so I’m passing them along. These cartridges are not compatible with existing Berkey (as far as I know), and they’re just similar products (these don’t help if you have a Berkey and need filter cartridges):

• Alexapure Water Filters sells something that looks almost identical to a Berkey, and makes similar claims about effectiveness.

• 4Patriots has a similar gravity-fed water filter with a stainless steel canister, though the filter mechanism is different, they do make similar efficacy claims.

• Aqua Rain is another maker of Berkey-like filters, and they have been a competitor for some time, offering similar products.

• Another reader recommends Clearly Filtered water pitchers.  These are very different from a Berkey, and more like a Britta filter pitcher in terms of capacity and shape.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and if you have any other thoughts, please do leave them in the comments below so everyone can benefit from your suggestions.

Beyond that, I’d also love to hear about what you’re growing this time of year, either indoors or outside. Let me know in the comments!

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance