6 Excellent DIY Indoor Gardening Tips for a Beginner Gardener

Last Updated on December 15, 2023 by Jason Nguyen

If your passion for gardening is being impeded by the lack of space and supplies, indoor gardening is the way to go. And applying DIY tools and ideas will only enhance your indoor gardening experience.

Imagine yourself being immensely creative in utilizing used materials, soil, seeds, colors, scales, pots, and so many versatile gardening tools.

But are you short of knowledge and skills? Keep your worry aside as we’ll share six excellent DIY indoor gardening tips and tools in this article. At least, you’ll learn to get your hands dirty, and that’s the very first step to making your gardening passion into a real hobby.  

What Is Indoor Gardening?

Indoor gardening entails utilizing relatively small spaces to plan a garden and plant various flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

For instance, if you’re an apartment dweller, you won’t have much space or a suitable environment to plant your favorite flowers and herbs. But, DIY indoor gardening will let you express your creative gardening ideas within a confined veranda, balcony, or even by the window.

You can go with vertical gardening on walls or by hanging clay or plastic pots. These are just a few options, but your skills and imagination are the only limits.

DIY home gardening lets you use all sorts of used and new materials along with common gardening supplies and tools to make a small floral heaven in your home.

Besides, it’s not that difficult nowadays to find the required gardening materials, including grow bags, potting soil, seeds, plants, etc. For instance, one of the best suppliers in the US where you can get colorful fabric grow bags is Wraxly. 

But feel free to explore more vendors and experts in your area to purchase necessary resources for your DIY gardening project. Now, let’s get to our main focus, DIY indoor gardening tips, in the next segment.

6 Excellent DIY Indoor Gardening Tips to Make Your Nursery Experience Fruitful

The indoor gardening tips that we’re going to share include how to use common gardening materials efficiently, how you can improvise with the tools and materials, make great use of the available space, and so on.

So, let’s get to know what these six excellent DIY indoor gardening tips are and how they can help you ace your home gardening project:

1.  Upcycled or Reusable Pots

Upcycled or reusable pots are excellent seed planters. You’ll find tons of reusable materials stashed in your house, only to be used in your home gardening. Below, we’ll share a few items you can make into wonderful seed pots:

Eggshell:

• Step 1: Collect eggshells that are only open on the top, not cracked on any other side of the shell.
• Step 2: Put the potting soil into the empty eggshells.
• Step 3: Sow carefully the seeds inside the soil.

In a few days, you’ll notice tiny plants sprouting their heads from inside the eggshells.

Toilet Paper Rolls:

• Step 1: Cut one end of the toilet paper rolls, so you can fold them into blocking the top end.
• Step 2: Pour the potting soil through the open ends of the rolls.
• Step 3: Now, sow the seeds inside the soil.

Toilet paper rolls are mostly biodegradable. So, this way, you’re not only DIY-ing your home gardening but also maintaining the ecosystem.

You can also use newspaper, egg cartons, cardboard, etc., as DIY indoor planters.

2.  Herb Plantation with Tin Cans

Wasted or used tin cans can go a long way while trying to plant your favorite herbs inside the home. Tin gardening is yet another excellent DIY home gardening idea.

How to make your empty tin cans into perfect herb gardens:

• Step 1: Get some empty tin cans. Clean them inside and out.
• Step 2: Color them as you like. But make sure to use organic colors.
• Step 3: Drill or cut a hole at the bottom of each tin can for draining extra water.
• Step 4: Now, put the potting soil into the empty cans.
• Step 5: Tuck the seeds or small plants inside the soil. Your tin can garden is ready.
• Step 6: For a more aesthetic design, you can make a hole at the top of each tin can while hanging them by hooks on the wall. 

3.  Fish Tank Terrarium Indoor Gardening

Gazing at your big empty aquarium can make you depressed. But letting some vibrant floral garden sleep into that tank will change things for the better.

Yes, you can turn your small, medium, or giant fish tank or aquarium into a well-decorated and ecological space. You don’t have one? Then cheap fish tanks are available in the market for your taking.

Let’s find out how to make an indoor garden out of your fish tank:

• Step 1: Clean the whole fish tank and let it dry.
• Step 2: Wrap the outside of the tank walls from the three sides only, so you can display your plants from the front.
• Step 3: Fill it in with the right potting soil; about four to six inches thick from the bottom.
• Step 4: Now, you can place the flower seeds inside the soil. Or, you may set the plants of various colorful flowers like Bella palm, spider plants, pothos, etc. 

Remember, covering the tank walls is important as it keeps the pests out while maintaining a temperate environment. You may mix the soil with some moss, succulents, etc., for a better plantation.

4.  Planting with Plastic or Glass Bottles

Reselling the collected plastic bottles could be an economic step to earn a few dimes. Nonetheless, utilizing them for your home gardening isn’t a bad idea either.

Plastic bottles are suitable for creating a lit indoor garden display. In a way, you’re saving the environment from non-biodegradable substances and making a way to produce more oxygen simultaneously.

So, how to make this possible? Follow these steps:

• Step 1: Take a serrated kitchen knife or a pair of scissors and a few unused plastic bottles.
• Step 2: Cut through each bottle’s side to make a hole in a square or rectangular shape. It may make your bottles look like submarines.
• Step 3: Pour potting soil through the cut-openings of the bottles without opening their caps.
• Step 4: Set the small plants of cactus, basil, cilantro, or any wild colorful herbs or flowers on the soil.
• Step 5: Now you can hang the bottles on a netted wall by tying them to the iron strings by threads.

There, you have your vertical bottle garden. Using bottles of multiple colors can make your vertical floral display even more appealing. Make sure you’ve hung them in a place with ample sunlight.

5.  Go for Vertical Wall Gardening

If you have a line of branded shoe collections and your cabinet can’t accommodate them nicely, a shoe organizer is the way to go. And that same thing can make a beautiful vertical wall garden. How?

• Step 1: Buy a shoe organizer or you can use an existing one if you like.
• Step 2: Fix each pocket of the shoe organizer with a plastic grocery bag (with fine mesh). It’s for preventing water leakage.
• Step 3: Hang the shoe organizer on a wall that particularly faces the sunlight.
• Step 4: Pour some pebbles into each pocket to ensure proper water drainage.
• Step 5: Now, put fresh soil into each pocket.
• Step 6: Sow the seeds or plants inside each pocket, and your vertical wall garden is ready.

6.  Regrowing Vegetables Indoor

It’s always fun and useful to regrow some vegetables that you consume daily. And our DIY indoor gardening tips have included that too.

Remember, vegetables that are suitable for regrowing include romaine lettuce, potato, celery, and onions.

Let’s try DIY gardening for onions, romaine lettuce, and celery:

• Step 1: Cut the romaine lettuce, onions, and celery about an inch from their bases.
• Step 2: Place them into a cup or bowl. You can use a plastic bottle that’s cut in the middle.
• Step 3: Pour water into the cup or bowl.
• Step 4: Place them in a place with constant sunlight.
• Step 5: Once they start growing healthily, pour fresh potting soil into each bowl of onions, lettuce, or celery.

As for regrowing potatoes, the DIY process here is a bit different. Let’s find that out in the following:

• Step 1: Take a potato spud with multiple eyes.
• Step 2: Cut the spud into several pieces, ensuring at least 1-2 eyes in each piece.
• Step 3: Now, dry the cut pieces for a few days. Make sure the cut edges are dried properly.
• Step 4: Upon being dried properly, plant the potato pieces in a planter pot (a spacious one). Make sure the eyes are facing up.
• Step 5: Make about 4 inches of soil covering the planted pieces.
• Step 6: As you notice the potato roots peeking through the soil, pour some more soil on top of the roots.  

Some Life-Saving Supplies and Tools for Indoor Gardening

Whether you choose to start your indoor garden to realize your gardening passion or to build a survival garden to meet your subsistence, you’ll always require some supplies and tools.

This section of our article particularly will share some life-saving supplies and tools that will take you a long way in greenkeeping jobs.

Let’s learn about some DIY indoor gardening supplies:

• Sunlight: Sunlight is what plants live and thrive on. Make sure your DIY plants are placed in appropriate places to absorb ample sunlight.
• Water: You don’t need to water your plants excessively, but still it should be available in adequate quantities. Water helps plants to extract the soil nutrients.  
• Potting soil: It’s essentially not a soil content, rather, a mix of compost, peat moss, and perlite. Helping your DIY garden flowers and herbs to grow healthily requires a proper amount of potting soil.
• Pebbles: Pebbles don’t directly help a plant grow. Instead, they drain the excess water from the soil to ensure a proper nutrient allocation.   
• Seeds: Vegetable or flower seeds should be healthy, which means that they should be free of pathogens, insects, and weeds. Make sure they’re more than 80% germinated and consist of seedling vigor.  
• Roots: You can collect plant roots from a plant’s lower section. Make sure the parent plant is free of disease.   

Ensuring the above supplies should work perfectly for your DIY indoor gardening.

On the other hand, DIY indoor gardening tools are something that you can buy or make yourself. A few tools or materials can be found at home too.

Let’s learn about some DIY gardening tools below:

• Scissors: You can’t make it. So, you have to buy a pair of gardening scissors, a pruner, or a pair of secateurs from the nearest store. They come in handy when you need to prune, trim, or cut leaves, roots, stems, etc.
• Knife: Instead of a high-end gardening knife, you can also use the kitchen serrated knife for weeding, slicing, or cutting. You can also use it for digging soil sometimes.
• Watering can: You can use a detergent jug or bottle as a watering can. Just make sure to have it deep-cleaned before watering your plants.
• Seed holders: Instead of buying plastic sealed seed holders, you can also utilize the old spice jars. Clean and wash them thoroughly before keeping plant seeds in them.
• Plastic bottles: You can actually collect large plastic bottles if you have a passion for home gardening. They’re a valuable resource in making a DIY indoor garden.
• DIY scoop: Make use of the milk carton by cutting its bottom half. Since it already has a handle, you can hold it to use the carton as a soil or fertilizer scoop.
• DIY wheelbarrow: Use your old picnic or dining tablecloth as a wheelbarrow. Put all your mulch, pebbles, bags, soil, etc., on one side of the tablecloth while dragging it with its one end from one place to another. 
• Egg cartons: Egg cartons can be used as seed planters, especially styrofoam egg cartons. Before putting soil and seeds on the egg cells, make holes for drainage.  
• DIY water sprinkler: You can make a water sprinkler by poking holes systematically on a 1-2 liter bottle. Then join the hose pipe with the bottle’s opening. Your DIY water sprinkler is ready to water your plants.

Wrapping Up

We hope our tips will help you in achieving your dream indoor garden.

Obviously, we won’t claim our tips will make you a pro gardener overnight. But hey, you’ll learn and improve the skills as you keep working on them.

Just don’t go overboard with your indoor gardening passion without learning about the necessary tools, supplies, and materials in depth. You can always come back to our precious guidelines here or explore them for yourself.