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Bought your book yesterday. Started reading last night. Wonderfully creepy. Just my speed.

Hey Jason! Go to http://www.plantansers.com check into your zone area. A lot does have to do with your location! It depends on what zone you are in to which type of plant you plant. First find your zone, second decide which winter plants would be right to plant in your area according to the suggestions you find in that website. Then amend your soils according to what is recommended to that plant. For instance , strawberries are heavy feeders and need a lot of different nutrients so you would want to go heavy with compost, manure and other elements to enrich your soil. Now is a great time to start your soil enrichment for your winter garden. Also check out your local county extension office and see if they have a Master Gardener program set up. That is a terrific way to find answers to your local problems! Good Gardening!!

   Dracaena, Sanseveria (Snake plant), Dieffenbachia, Aralia, Schefflera and Ficus are all great choices. I recommend these over most others because of the very large variety of sizes, colors and textures available as well as the relative ease of caring for them. From upright and narrow with cream colored edges to large, coarse burgundy mounds and small green trees, they cover the range.

   You really need to get into a garden center and check out what's in their greenhouses. Many chain stores like Lowe's and Home Depot also carry houseplants, these tend to use color coded tags in the plants. Purple would mean low light, orange would mean medium light. Either of these will do fine in most household settings.

   One word of caution, some common house plants can be quite toxic to pets like cats and dogs. Dieffenbachia species and Schefflera are on this list. You'll definitely need to take this into consideration when deciding upon plants and where you'll put them. Some research may be in order but that info is easily found all over the web with a quick Google search.

I have seen roses grown in hidden attic grow rooms, under houses, and in secret hidden rooms. Some people have grown roses inside stacks of firewood, cleverly arranged around an interior room. Consider having a backhoe bury an overseas shipping container, I bet you could grow a lot of roses in that! Watch out for your electrical consumption and your infra-red "heat signature", and if your roses become too fragrant towards harvest, you may have to add odor-control equipment, as well. Happy growing!

I'm reading a whole book right now about container gardening (It's called Crops in Pots). Really, many useful plants can be grown in containers. According to the book, anything from tomatoes to carrots to lettuce can be grown indoors– especially if you find a dwarf cultivar (a variety that grows smaller than its other varieties).

The main things to consider when growing plants is the container size and lighting. Some plants need giant containers to ever produce, while others can thrive and produce crops in smaller containers or at least containers that realistically can be kept indoors. (For example, some small varieties of okra can produce when planted in a five-gallon bucket; that's rather large for a houseplant but it isn't unrealistically huge. And some herbs– like lemon balm, lavender, thyme– can thrive in 8" pots, a size that would do just great on your computer desk or shelf.) The other important consideration is light. Some plants don't need bright direct sunlight all day, for example African violets or many types of mint. Others, however, thrive in bright, hot sunlight all day. Research the specific needs of each plant that you would like to grow indoors. Even if the plant you like is said to thrive in bright direct sunlight, you can still grow it indoors; it just might be a little more spindly, less lush, and less productive than it would be if grown outside. Just give it as much light as you can. Leave it by a sunny south-facing window, or let it stay in an east-facing window in the morning and a west-facing window in the afternoon and evening. Or, consider letting it stay in a container outside part or all of the day when whether permits (when it's not winter).

Most herbs grow easily in containers. Currently, I personally have growing basil, lavender, rosemary, lemon balm, thyme, pennyroyal, and oregano.

Citrus grows well in containers, especially if you have varieties grafted onto a dwarf rootstock. They make beautiful houseplants and can even produce a fair amount of fruit after 3-5 years (or 5-7 in some types). Citrus trees can be grown inside from seed, though they might not be true to type (planting an orange seed does not guarantee your tree will grow oranges as desirable as the one it came from; citrus cross-pollinates with other types of citrus, so you never know what you'll get. You may get good oranges, or you may get something too sour or bland. This gamble can be a fun adventure, though it will take 5 years to find out, which is a lot of time and effort to put into something you may not want– though, no matter what kind of fruit they do or don't produce, indoor citrus make BEAUTIFUL foliage houseplants. I had a seed from a key lime sprout today; I think it's a very fun and worthwhile gamble.)

Aloe vera also grows very well inside, and it's very practical– its gel is used to heal wounds and sooth sunburns. Just pull off a leaf, cut it open, and squeeze out the gel. I personally grow aloe vera and use it as a hair gel– it doesn't have a concrete-hold like store-bought hair gel, but it's great for smoothing down flyaways without making my hair look, well, gelled down. Aloe vera is probably the most un-killable plant there is. It can literally go two months without watering and not die.

These are just a few I'd recommend; I'm really into container gardening. Here are a few more sites to get you started:

http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/containerindoor/container.asp

http://www.containergardeningtips.com/

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/container/container.html

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/homegard/cntanegrd.htm

Happy growing!

A pet store for a fish tank. Also place about 5 " of clean gravel in the bottom. I would get the best house potting dirt you can buy. Not much plant food though. I think A large K-Mart or some place like that would have the right dirt. I know there special dirt packages for different kinds of plants. I'm not sure if you should cover it with plastic to keep in humidity for the type of plants you want to plants. If you are close to a Library I am sure they have books on those plants. Or check e-bay for books. Also local extension co-op.