The AeroGarden

Aerogrow International, the maker of the AeroGarden, is definitely following the time honored business tradition of selling a product at or below cost and making their profit off refills and supplies. The plant’s come in special “bio-dome” pods so you can’t use your own seeds, also you must purchase the nutrient tablets or plant food from the company so the true cost of the AeroGarden is a bit higher then the initial price of the AeroGarden.

However that’s about as bad as it gets, the actual product is very well constructed and actually sells for a pretty fair price. While I would have much preferred the AeroGarden came with the ability to grow from traditional seeds I have found that the seed “bio-domes” do give a harvest of about 4-5 months. As well if you shop around you can find them fairly well priced as low as 9.95 each instead of the $29.95 when buying direct.

If your like me and don’t really care to have an outdoor garden and kill pretty much any plant besides the cactus then the AeroGarden can be a great investment. Most of the time when I buy fresh herbs at the grocery store they go bad before I use even half of them. But with the AeroGarden you can pick the herbs you want and the plant keeps the herbs fresh when you’re not using it and grows more herb to replace what you’ve used.

It’s one of those rare things I’ve bought from a television commercial and actually delivered on it’s promises!

You can grow pretty much anything with an AeroGarden that you can grow in a traditional garden. The only limitation is you have to use seed kits provided by the manufacturer, AeroGrow International.

Most of the herb and flower seed kits come with a variety of different plants as opposed to a single type of plant. This is a great idea since the AeroGarden is fairly compact and it would limit its usefulness if you could only grow one herb, flower or vegetable in it.

On average each seed kit takes three to five weeks for the plants to mature and should allow you harvest for four to five months!

Herb Seed Kits: Cost $19.95

French Herbs – Includes Chervil, Sorrel, Marseille Basil, Parsley, Sage, Savory and Chives.

Gourmet Herbs – Includes Thyme, Chives, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Mint and Parsley.

Holiday Herbs – Includes Parsley, Oregano, Thyme and Sage.

International Basil – Includes a number of varieties of Basil from around the world.

Italian Herbs – Includes Basil, Garlic Chives, Mint, Savory, parsley, Oregano and Thyme.

Japanese Herbs – Includes Mitsuba, Red Shiso, Nira Chives, Cress and Shungiku.

Vegetable Seed Kits: Cost $19.95

Cherry Tomatos

Chili Peppers – Includes three distinct varieties of chili peppers.

Green Beans

Salsa Garden – Includes Cherry Tomatoes and Jalapeno Peppers.

Snow Peas

Salad Seed Kits: Cost $19.95

Arugula – Salad leafs that add spice to salads.

Baby Greens

Mesclun – Blend of sweet lettuces.

Romaine lettuce – Includes both red and green leafs.

Salad Greens – Includes seven different lettuce varieties.

The first thing that came to mind when opening the shipping box was that only three of the seven bio-dome pods actually had seeds in them. It turns out that due to the relatively small size of the AeroGarden, it doesn’t have the space required to support seven growing tomato plants.

Fair enough, after all the reason I bought the AeroGarden was because of its small size.

Surprisingly even with only three plants it didn’t take very long for the plants to outgrow the space required and you will definitely need to spend at least a few minutes each week trimming your plants other wise they will grow to a point where the lights in the hood will start to kill the plant.

Besides the unexpected maintenance I can’t say I experienced any difficulty with the Cherry Tomato kit from start to blossoming, which took me about three weeks. Once the blossoms turned into actual tomatoes I had a little trouble remembering to trim the plant which caused some leaves to die.

However the resulting harvest was definitely worth the investment of time as I rediscovered my love for tomato sandwiches and fresh tomatoes taste far better then ones that have been sitting in my refrigerator for two weeks..

Well as much as the company claims the AeroGarden is “space age” technology it actually uses some long standing technologies and ideas. As I mentioned earlier the AeroGarden is essentially a customized hydroponics kit. It looks far better and takes up less space then pretty much any other kit on the market.

Instead of using organic compounds in soil to break down fertilizers into plant food the hydroponics use fertilizer in it’s purest form that can be absorbed from water thus negating the need for plants to be potted or any soil to be used at all.

There is some debate as to whether hydroponics are actually considered organic and both sides make very convincing arguments however test have shown that hydroponics fertilizers are in many cases purer then those used in even the strictest organic farms. But this review is not the place to engage in debate, there are many studies and articles to be found online to help you make you own judgments.

A number of benefits of using AeroGarden’s hydroponics are:

-Plants grow more than twice as fast.

-Automated lighting control using energy efficient bulbs.

-Automated watering.

-No dirt, mess or gardening experience required.

Bio-Dome Seed Kits

The seed kits available for the garden are designed to provide near rainforest like conditions for the seeds in a self contained “pod”. These kits are where the magic happens and they operate on a “plug and play” design you can simply mix and match the “pods” from various seed kits to give you the type of harvest you’re looking for.

Inside the “pod” is a pre-seeded grow sponge that helps to balance the water and air levels during germination. Each “pod” is also designed to maintain the right humidity level for each plant.

Nutrient Tablets

Perhaps the easiest way to describe the nutrient tablets to call them fertilizer, depending on your seed kit every week or so you will have to insert some tablets into the AeroGarden.

The tablets contain not only the nutrients but they also work to ensure the pH balance of your tap water is perfect for the plants to grow. What’s in the tablets? Well that one is a bit of a company secret, however I can tell you they contain some elements of seaweed.

Glow Bulbs

In order to provide the type of light required to grow plants, the AeroGarden uses a full spectrum light bulb to simulate sunlight. My first concern was how much electricity the bulbs would be using but rest assured the bulbs are energy efficient bulbs that don’t use much more energy then other light bulbs around your house.