The AeroGarden

In my town we have a large farmers market, every Saturday Main street is shut down and farmers from all around gather to sell their farm fresh vegetables. The town quickly mobs the area and by noon the farmers pack it in and we all go home with the small town feeling and a weeks supply of veggies. Now many times I hear my friends say how much better tasting the vegetables and fruits they buy are however I personally can’t tell the difference.

I did some research on the internet to see if I was the only one and I am thankful to say their is a minority of people who just like myself can’t tell the difference. However I do agree that these local and homegrown veggies are much healthier and have far less chemicals then many of the produce at the groccery store.

However I have noticed a disturbing trend among small town farmers markets…. Resellers

That’s right instead of growing their own fruits and vegetables these people simply buy profitable items from farmers all over the place and come to farmers markets, plop up big farm friendly signs and sell the product as if it was a result of their own farming skills…. pfft

I only noticed this by accident really when I noticed many stalls were selling veggies with stickers on them with different farm names and even some from locales 4+ hours away!!! So much for being local and how do they really know which products ARE organic?

Maybe I’m just old fashioned but it upsets me to see something from my childhood changing so drastically

Anyways back to growing my own fruits and veggies… Btw just added a third aerogarden to the collection, these things are just plain addictive.

I’ve noticed some confusion around the web reguarding the labels on the AeroGarden “grow pods”, to be honest I had a few minor difficulties with them as well.

Usually within a few days of starting a new seed kit you will notice the plants are starting to grow, what sometimes happens is the plants get stuck on the top of the label and then either push the entire label off or get trapped inside the grow pod.

Some people have solved this problem by removing the labels however this can cause problems. You see the labels are their to keep light from shining into the water, when to much light enters the bottom of the AeroGarden you have a high chance of developing algae problems… Which are a pain to clean and can damage the plants.

The easiest and in my opinion the best solution is to watch for these growth problems and once the plant appears to be trapped inside the grow pod, it’s time to nudge them through yourself. That’s it, thats all. If you don’t catch it in time or the plant pushes the label off, simply nudge it back down. As long as the label is preventing light from entering the bottom of the AeroGarden you should be fine!

So far the strawberry plants seem to be thriving in the AeroGarden, whenever one flower dies or wilts away another quickly grows to replace it. The plant leaves seem healthy for the most part, a few are a tad brown on the edges however so I will have to keep an eye on that.

As you can see from the above image, the flowers are healthy and in the next few weeks we should start to make some real progress towards having actual strawberries growing here. Personally I am pleased with the progress, water consumption is still very high compared with what I’m used to with other seed kits at this point but I am excited to taste my own fresh strawberries soon!

It’s been awhile since I last posted a strawberry update, a lot has happened the last two weeks. Most notably the plants finally started to grow, the root structures are coming a long nicely in the AeroGarden watering tray and perhaps most important… The strawberry flowers are starting to form!

Very exciting..

Here’s a close up of the flower:

More to come in the next few weeks!