FARMER NICK’S
Quick-Start Guide to Indoor Farming
How to Grow Delicious, Fresh Food in Small Spaces (All Year Round)
It’s Easy to Grow Your Own Food
You don’t need land or outdoor space… or even dirt.
In this guide, I’ll teach you three easy at-home growing methods:
-
You can multiply herbs just by cutting them and sticking those cuttings in water. They become their own plants!
-
You can grow your own microgreens from scratch in just a couple weeks… and once you know how to do that, you’ll know how to start just about any plant from seed.
-
Soil is overrated… so grow crops with water instead! With a hydroponic setup, you can grow an amazing variety and volume of plants even in a compact space.
No experience required!
This guide will tell you everything you need to know, have, and do every step of the way for all three methods.
This Guide Is For You If…
-
![]()
You enjoy fresh veggies and herbs.
If you thought the farmers’ market was as fresh as things could get, you’re in for a treat. You literally can’t buy food as fresh as what you grow yourself.
-
![]()
You want to be more in touch with the food you eat.
What better way to know what’s going into your food than to grow it yourself? Not only will it be some of the cleanest food you’ve ever eaten, but you will have watched it (and cared for it) the whole way there.
-
![]()
You’ve liked the idea of growing your own food, but you don’t have much space.
It’s pretty normal to assume that you need open land to grow things, but the whole point of this guide is that that’s not true. You can grow things on windowsills, in your garage, even in closets (I have an entire hydroponic system in my closet next to all of my clothes).
-
![]()
You could use a relaxing, rewarding, inexpensive hobby.
Plants are quiet and low-maintenance; they do their own thing while you do yours. When you do choose to pay attention, they don’t need much from you. It’s low-stakes all around.
-
![]()
You want to beautify your home and breathe more life into your décor.
Every house could benefit from some living green stuff, and that’s exactly what this guide is about. You can mount growing containers on walls or hang them from ceilings if you really wanna get into it, but even just a couple of herbs in jars can really brighten things up.
Common Misconceptions
and Their Cheerful Corrections
I don’t have access to open ground, so I guess I can’t grow anything.
Fun fact: a lot of crops actually don’t need soil to survive and thrive, meaning they don’t need open ground either. As long as you provide what your plants need, they don’t care (or even know!) where they are, and they don’t need nearly as much space as you might think.
Growing my own food will require me to interact with dirt… and I don’t like dirt.
Like I said, a lot of plants don’t really need dirt, which means you don’t either! Two of the three growing methods in this guide don’t require any dirt whatsoever (and the third barely requires you to touch it).
I’m a busy person, so I’m afraid my plants will die of neglect.
These growing methods require very little time in total—call it an hour for setup and a couple minutes a day after that—and there’s a lot you can automate, which I discuss and recommend in the guide. The more regularly you check on your plants, the better… but forgetting about them for a couple of days isn’t likely to make a life-or-death difference.
I’m not a green thumb, so I’ll probably mess this up.
First of all, remember that you don’t have to tell the plants what to do; they already know. Secondly, I’ll tell you what you need to do for them, and it’s not much. Last but not least, I encourage you to realize that a green thumb is just a person who has interest and/or experience in dealing with plants… and that’s what this guide will help you build for yourself!
Why grow stuff myself when I can just buy it at the store?
Ah, but that’s part of the point here: you actually CAN’T buy this stuff at the store. You can buy herbs and veggies by the same names, but they won’t be nearly as fresh (or local) as anything you grow yourself. Even if I’m somehow wrong about that, I’m right about this: you certainly can’t buy the pride of home-grown food or the skills that enable you to grow it.
Get the Guide
Meet Farmer Nick
Meet Farmer Nick
Hi everybody! My name is Nick Cutsumpas, but most people just call me Farmer Nick.
By now, I’m a plant coach, urban gardener, and landscape designer. I’ve got a show on Netflix called Instant Dream Home, and I’m the author of Plant Coach: The Beginner’s Guide To Caring for Plants and the Planet. But for me, it all started in my parents’ backyard, where I started my first garden as a teenager and developed a passion for home-grown food.
I’m able to write this guide because, when I moved away from home, I didn’t just leave the garden behind; I moved to the kinds of places (LA and NYC) that don’t have gardens. I wanted to continue growing my own food, but I had to learn how to do it all indoors in relatively compact spaces. So I did, and I’ve been doing it ever since!
This guide tells you everything I know about my three favorite methods of growing food at home. It collects a decade’s worth of hands-on experience, tips, and background info in one place so you can get what you need and hit the ground running. Enjoy!