Winter tomatoes; one grower's approach.

[Sequim]

I’ve been growing tomatoes and other vegetables as a hobby for over 40 years, enjoying the convenience of growing in southern California. I have since relocated to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State where growing is more challenging.

I insist on a continuous supply of home-grown fresh tomatoes but the plants simply can’t struggle through our dark winters, even in a heated greenhouse. So I re-purposed my garage workshop to accommodate a small number of tomato plants with a little room left over for leaf lettuce and other greens.

The indoor growing experience has been the most gratifying of my horticultural career. What follows is a writing about my experiences that I hope you will find helpful, or at least interesting. It is too long for a single post so it will be a succession of posts.

There are other paths to the same goal, some of which may involve better choices than mine. But what I have now works well, and should be a good starting point for other experimenters.

Growing Space (Images 1 and 2)

My growing lab is 24 feet long by 9 feet wide with 9-foot ceiling height. Four feet of the east end is lost to a door from the adjacent garage bay leaving 20 feet for the tomato line along one wall. The active growing area is 16 feet long with a little working space at each end. Taut cables are installed in the overhead for lighting and plant support.

The opposite wall accommodates 20 feet of shelving for lettuce growers and equipment storage. Two 54-inch industrial ceiling fans run continuously to disrupt air stratification and distribute the heat from the lights evenly throughout the room.

The next post will describe what was done to provide electrical power for the lab.