> "It’s been less practical to grow bulk vegetables, such as spinach. Brazilian spinach has been fairly successful in terms of growth, but it takes about a month for a cutting to grow to maturity, and we need about four plants to make a salad, so we’d need several racks of bins to make a dent in our vegetable consumption. Also, in general our herbs have had less pests than leafy green vegetables."
Growing food is a pretty complicated, and often underappreciated, skill. Humans learned to control fire and make tools well before, i.e. many thousands of years before, the first farmer-based civilizations began to appear.
Producing an appreciable amount of food indoors in a cold climate in the winter months might require several thousand watts of lighting, a fairly large space, signicant amounts of nutrients, and decent control of airflow, temperature and humidity. Constant daily work and inspection is required to avoid insect infestations and mold outbreaks (cleaning is critical). Many flowering and fruiting cycles in plants are highly light-period-sensitive so that has to be carefully managed as well. Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail.
As a result, most simple indoor hydroponics setups are geared towards things like lettuce which just produce leaves. If you can manage to get good yields of things like tomatoes, chilis, strawberries then it's quite the accomplishment. Some people even manage potatoes and carrots, which seems to be the trickiest of all (root development being the issue).
Outdoor hydroponics is a lot easier with full sunlight, and while many people will say 'just use soil' in many areas good soil is hard to come by. Indeed, some people say the most valuable and arcane farming skill is the generation of high-quality soil (which requires the composting arts, plus knowledge of mineral substrates).