The end of summer doesn’t need to mean the end of fresh produce. If you’ve been dreading the time of year when the garden beds are empty, it’s time to start thinking creatively and move that garden inside. While you’re not going to get the full bounty of a summer vegetable patch, with a little know-how, you can produce enough vegetables indoors throughout winter to keep homegrown salad on the table.

The challenge of growing seeds in your kitchen will depend somewhat on where you live. But for many plants it’s not so much the lower temperatures that stop them growing, it’s the lack of daylight. Even if you’re blessed with a sunny windowsill, the shorter days in winter means you might need to employ the help of a grow light or two.

Low humidity can also be an issue for plants, as indoor heating sucks moisture from the air. If you want to get serious about building a countertop garden, a humidifier will help to address this issue. Never the less, these 11 vegetables are listed from the easiest to grow and maintain to the hardest — so you can test out your gardening skills before investing in any equipment.

If you think you don’t have much of a green thumb, then start with growing sprouts. Sprouts themselves aren’t technically vegetables, but the sprouted seeds of plants like mung beans, radishes, or sunflowers. They might be small, but they are incredibly nutrient dense.

These beginner-friendly plants don’t need a pot with soil, just a jar with a little water – and they certainly don’t need grow lights. Depending on the type of sprout, they’ll be ready to eat in just 5 to 10 days. When growing your own, you also don’t have to worry about how to keep sprouts fresh.

Just like sprouts, microgreens are the result of the early growing phase of other vegetables. Any veggies with edible leaves can be eaten as microgreens, but cress, amaranth, beets, and mustard plants are popular choices. To grow them you will need seedling trays with soil, or you can reuse an empty drink carton, or any other item you might normally toss, as a microgreen planter.

Microgreens do require more light than sprouts, so in the winter you’ll need to sit them on the windowsill or under an LED lamp. Planted and grown like other leafy greens, they’ll be ready to eat in two to three weeks. Once you cut or pick the stems, they won’t grow back, but if you sow more seeds every seven to 10 days you’ll have an ongoing harvest.

Scallions or green onions don’t even require you to buy seeds. Rather, stop throwing out the roots of green onions that you buy at the store and simply replant them after you’ve eaten the leaves.

What’s even better is that the scallions will continue to grow back after you cut them, giving you that fresh, soft onion flavor all year round. Scallions do require plenty of light – but they will grow comfortably in a small pot, making them the perfect vegetables to grow on even the smallest windowsill.

Growing lettuce indoors in the winter is all about choosing the right type of lettuce. You’ll need to go for loose-leaf lettuces, so you don’t need to wait for the full head to develop. These include oak leaf, red leaf, and black-seeded Simpson. Alternatively, look for a variety that’s been developed for low light and low temperature growing, such as Arctic King, Winter Marvel, or Winter Destiny.

Lettuces need around six to eight weeks under a minimum of 12 hours of light per day for the plant to grow full size, but you can harvest the outer leaves in as few as three weeks. If you have the space, you can sow in succession every one to two weeks to ensure you’ll always have salad at hand.

Despite originating from the warm climate of the Mediterranean, arugula grows well in the winter. That is, provided it has enough light  – around six hours per day. However, arugula has a short root system and doesn’t require deep pots. It can adapt well to growing in containers as shallow as 4 inches deep.

The main thing you need to be careful of is the temperature. Too warm and the arugula can bolt, at which point you’ll need to pull it out as the leaves turn  tough and bitter. Before you start thinking you have enough leafy greens, remember there are plenty of uses for arugula that aren’t salad.

Greens might make for a good salad base, but growing radishes will add a bit more heft to your plate. These are a great beginner-friendly vegetable, requiring just 6 hours of sun a day, and not too much space. You can get away with pots just 6 inches deep.

If you needed more reason to plant them, radishes will grow quickly – from seed to harvest in around 30 days. Radish tops are also edible, so when you’ve done crunching your way through the bulb, you’ll have a leafy green from the same crop.

The possibly most underrated leafy green, Swiss chard, might not be at the top of everyone’s planting list — but its nutritional value and the fact that even the leftover stems can be eaten should earn it a place in your kitchen garden.Swiss chard is typically an autumn crop but can be grown inside in the winter, it just takes a little longer. 

You’ll definitely need a grow lamp to grow Swiss chard indoors in the winter, as it prefers 10 to 16 hours of light a day. It also needs more space than lettuce or arugula, so you’ll need room for pots at least 8 inches deep. Getting the large leaves you’re used to can take up to two months, but Swiss chard can be eaten as baby leaves in as little as four weeks.

Spinach is a wonderfully versatile vegetable used in recipes around the world, but when it comes to growing conditions it’s not quite so flexible. Although it loves cool surroundings, it can be sensitive to changes in temperature and watering. If you can provide the right conditions, you’ll have a consistent harvest.

By picking the outer spinach leaves only, the plant will continue to grow, and you should get more harvests out of the life of the plant. This is especially useful if you enjoy the soft taste and texture of baby spinach.

Given that kale is such a hardy vegetable, generally harvested in the cooler months, you might think it’s the easiest of the leafy greens to grow indoors in winter. While it is tolerant to cold, the main issue is that it needs a lot of space, light, and time. Even if you opt for dwarf varieties of kale, which is recommended, you’re still looking at pots that are at least 12 inches wide and deep.

If you have an indoor spot that gets full sun for at least six hours a day the kale will grow, but it probably won’t thrive in winter without a full 12 hours of artificial lighting. Kale does take around two months to reach maturity, but you can enjoy baby leaves and microgreens before that.

For those blessed with more indoor space, carrots are a great way to make use of it. Carrots are very tolerant to cold and don’t require a lot of light, but they do need large deep pots in order to grow into something useable.

Smaller carrot varieties have more flavor as well as require less space, but you can harvest any carrot variety as a baby carrot in around 40 days. Just as with radishes, carrot greens can be eaten, and make an excellent addition to pesto.

Though you might think of tomatoes as the quintessential summer vegetable, they can be grown inside in winter. The trick is to cultivate miniature varieties, as they grow much more quickly. Looks for varieties labeled as dwarf, micro, or patio tomatoes, including Tiny Tim or Micro Tom varieties. 

As you can imagine, tomatoes will need plenty of light and warmth, so even with a sunny window, you’ll probably need an LED lamp as well. Tomatoes are what’s known as a self-pollinating plant, so in order for the fruit to grow, you’ll need to shake the plants a little to help get the pollen where it needs to go.