Soil sprouts growing on a west-facing windowsill
Growing food in Zone Zero can be fun and productive, but it is a good idea to have a plan in mind of what you want to achieve and then look at your house to see how it can support your plan to grow some food indoors. What this article covers is an approach to finding the best place to grow food in your Zone Zero and then putting a plan in place to achieve it.
Growing spaces in your Zone Zero can be grouped into one of three functional areas where food growing can take place.
- Close to windows (including skylights)
- Other Indoor spaces (requiring artificial lighting) including the garage.
- Outdoors in Zone Zero attached areas (eg patio, deck, balcony)
Tiny balcony growing herbs in recycled containers
As noted previously in the article introducing Zone Zero Farming, for the purposes of this series of articles, I have included the following areas to be covered under the term ‘Zone Zero’ –
- The dwelling place eg house, apartment, flat, townhouse, unit or tiny house.
- Patios and decking attached to the house and balconies attached to flats, units and apartments
- The garage, as it is quite often integral with the house.
Zone Zero Functional Areas
1.0 Close to Windows and skylights
The amount of light available from windows may depend on shade from fences, other buildings, trees etc and the aspect of your particular Zone Zero, but they are most likely to be useful for growing food indoors without having to include artificial lighting. These areas can generally be divided into four distinct spaces –
- North facing windows – These will generally give you the most hours of sunlight, although in high summer the sun will be passing almost directly overhead, reducing the amount of sunlight at this time of the year. I would love to have a discussion about north facing windows with the idiots who designed our house – we have none!
- Skylights – If you have a skylight, plants grown directly below it should get a reasonable amount of light and grow well. We don’t have one, but I would like to get one in our hall which is dark most of the time. I could then grow something on top of the bookshelves in the hall! I had a theory, that if you have a single skin roof (maybe on a shed or garage, you could install a drink bottle skylight and see how that went, but maximum light level I got when I checked was 300 lux at midday, not enough to grow food plants.
- East/West facing windows – This depends on the aspect of the rest of the house, but windows with some eastern and western exposure may provide enough natural light to grow food crops. The front of our house faces a little south of east so due to that and added trees in our front yard we would not get enough light to grow anything but the slightly north western exposure of the back of the house means that my office window and the dining room window get enough to do some food growing. The rest of the back of the house is protected from the sun by foliage and the back deck.
- South facing windows – Seeing as these will get the least direct light, they are likely not going to be the best choice for growing food in Zone Zero.
This window faces slightly north of west
2.0 Other Indoor Spaces
These are legion and can be anywhere in the house or garage where you can find room, on top of cupboards, shelves, and chests of drawers, bookshelves, on tables, benches and desks, on a bedside table. Basically, any flat space, that is not in the way, and where you can set up artificial lighting (so power of some description will be required). There are some other factors to consider but the limiting factor is light – the right frequencies, intensely enough and for long enough to allow your food plants to grow to maturity for harvest. This will be covered in more detail in the next article on Zone Zero microclimates. I have seen it written that with grow lights it is possible to set up to grow inside cupboards or other furniture, but it seems to me that it would be difficult to provide the air movement required to grow healthy food plants in these situations. This will also be discussed under the article on Zone Zero Microclimates.
3.0 Outdoors (patio, deck, balcony)
Areas attached to zone zero that can be used to grow food crops have a greater likelihood of getting at least some sun, although this is not a given. We have a front patio (1800mm x 1500mm) that has a southerly aspect and is lucky to get an hour of sunshine early in the morning. By contrast, the back deck gets full sun from midday to sunset.
There are other things that these outdoor areas should be assessed for as well as aspect, things that include its dimensions, material of construction and ability to support the weight of growing containers, drainage and fall, water access, prevailing wind and existing materials, plants and structures. This has been covered in more detail here.
Even a small 5.6m x 2.1m balcony can produce food!
With Zone Zero divided up into functional areas, each can be assessed.
Assessing Zone Zero
Draw a diagram
To kick off the assessment, planning and documenting the process, obtain an A4 grid book, this will make drawing out your Zone Zero easier. Draft of the layout of your zone zero on a grid page. Include the loungeroom, kitchen dining area, bedrooms, closets then mark all windows and skylights on the diagram and also include any patios, decks, balconies and the garage if that is to be used as a growing area.
While it does not have to be strictly to scale, if the sizes of the areas are a rough approximation this will help when designing the growing areas. The diagram should be used to show the areas which are most likely to be used for Zone Zero growing. It will also be helpful to mark the direction of north to one side of the diagram.
Identify specific growing areas
This is best done by doing a walkthrough of each area with the Zone Zero diagram, pencil in hand. As areas are identified, they can be noted on the diagram and any area specific observations recorded.
1.0 Windowsills and skylights
Check each of the windowsills to determine their aspect, which will then indicate the amount of light they will be able to provide. Each windowsill should also be assessed for: ease of access (do you have to crawl across a bed or move around a cupboard or chest of drawers to get to it?), whether the windows open and how they do (ie are they sliding, sash, casement, bi-fold, louvre windows or whatever) and are there insect screens or other obstructions in place to prevent accessing the area outside the window. Also, it should be noted if they have any other impediments inside the rooms such as drapes, curtains, venetian blinds or plantation shutters in place hampering access to the inside of the window. Note the results on your diagram.
Plantation shutters (from the inside) great for keeping out the heat, not so great for Zone Zero Growing
When Inspecting areas around the windows look out for space where shelves can be constructed across windows, or where a pre-constructed ‘Windowsill Farm’ can be fitted in; room where hanging containers can be hung in windows, windowsills with enough room that they can be widened to 150mm to 200mm and large windows where a floor-to-ceiling vertical growing unit could be installed. Also consider if a window box/window box greenhouse could be installed.
Sash windows on an older house
2.0 Other Indoor areas
Go for a walk through each room/potential growing area, including the garage and identify any unused space that can be pressed into service growing vegetables under lights such as on cupboards, empty bookshelves and or on chests of drawers, on tables, benches or desks as mentioned above. There may also be open areas where a freestanding vertical growing structure with grow lights could be constructed, such as against a wall where there is currently no existing furniture. Make any notes on the diagram to mark out potential growing areas.
3.0 Outdoor spaces
Checkout the outdoor spaces attached to Zone Zero. Make sure to identify areas that need to be kept free of obstructions to maintain access to doors, stairs or existing outdoor furniture. It will not make you popular if these are designated as growing areas, which will interfere with the daily operation of these areas.
Places to look for when conducting your walk through the outdoor area include: places to hang containers from eaves or pergolas, open areas against walls where a vertical container garden could be constructed, open areas where freestanding growing structures could be placed or areas outside windows where an external window box could be installed.
Hooks at the edge of the back deck supporting productive hanging baskets
Zone Zero Microclimates
Overlaid on the Zone Zero functional areas are microclimates that can impact on them and change what we can grow and/or how we can grow it. Before a plan can be developed, the existing microclimates need to be identified. That information can then be included in the plan, along with any actions required to modify existing microclimates and/or develop new ones.
Microclimates will be the subject of the next article in this series.
