Starting an Indoor Winter Garden

As the summer winds down I usually stop planting certain crops because they would never survive the first frost that is only a matter of weeks away.  This year I am trying something a little bit different.  I bought several seed starting lights last winter because I needed more room to start the large amount of seedlings for the spring garden.  All summer they have sat idle and I have decided that I wanted to see if I could get any winter harvests of summer veggies if I grew those crops indoors.  I'm not going to try to grow corn or anything, but I've heard that you can grow things like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers fairly well in containers.  Why not try them inside in the winter?  I am aware that I will need to play the role of the pollinator when the plants come inside and I am fully armed with a fine paintbrush.  I figure that the seed starting lights should give them enough supplemental light if I keep them near a sunny window I just need to keep them watered and happy and I could be eating fresh picked tomatoes in the middle of January, or maybe even February. 

The tomato plants I have were started from the scraps left over from the end of the season at the nearby nursery.  Two patio tomato seedlings sounded like a perfect start to me since they were bred to grow in containers.  They were planted at least a month ago and have long since overcome any shock from being in a tiny pot for too long.

The peppers went in only a couple of weeks ago.  They were also terribly root bound in their pots, but they have shown the first signs of perking up.  New leaves mean that they survived being transplanted, so things should only look up from here.

The cucumbers I have started as seeds since they don't really appreciate being transplanted.  They germinated well in the summer heat.  I need to add some sort of support to their pots since I expect they will want to climb something when they start to take off.  I just hope that the pots I put them in will be big enough for them when they reach full size.  I only planted two plants since I only wanted enough for fresh eating in the winter.

Everything will grow outside until the evenings start to get chilly.  Once the cold nights come on, these plants will move indoors to a sunny location under the grow lights to do what they will for me this winter.