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!

Very exciting..

Here’s a close up of the flower:

More to come in the next few weeks!

I’ve refilled the water supply for the first time and so far everything appears healthy. I am just surprised at how much water these plants are soaking up, it’s nothing like any other AeroGarden seed kit or plant I’ve tried to grow before.

If you come across and good reviews that I have missed please comment and let me know. It’s actually surprisingly difficult to find reviews that have been published for the sake of helping people make a purchasing decision. The majority are done by sites actually selling the product and most of the rest are done by people trying to sell the product.

The AeroGarden Strawberry kit

The big difference between traditional seed kits and the strawberry kit is you receive real live plants as opposed to seeds. This means you’ll need to do just a little more work then normal when you first plant them.

What you Get:

• 7 Strawberry Plants - Sealed in a special bag.
• An official AeroGarden Strawberry planting, tending and harvesting guide.
• 24 nutrient tablets - These are special for the AeroGarden Strawberry kit and will last you 24 weeks.
• Finally…. The invoice.

When opening the bag for the first time I couldn’t help but notice that strawberry plants were a tad bit large for the bag, which made it difficult to cut open without damaging the leaves. So be careful as these kits are hard to come by!

The plant’s themselves are fairly easy to handle, simply take them out of the cut baggy and place them in your seed tray. It does seem a little different at first since the plants don’t use the “bio-dome” that the rest of the AeroGarden seed kits use. Also since these are live plants don’t leave them sitting idly on your desk, open and plant them in the AeroGarden as soon as possible.

Once you have all the plants nestled inside your AeroGarden, take a look at the root’s. We want to make sure that none of the roots are touching against any of the interior seams, if any are touching it’s quite easy to fix, just move them with your fingers. Once thats done you now have an AeroGarden full of (hopefully) growing strawberry plants!

One thing I should point out however is that AeroGrow has changed to a different breed of strawberries and so they are now reccomending that we DO NOT use the strawberry setting on the AeroGarden (oddly enough). Instead they recommend using the Herbs/Basil setting.

Whats the difference between the settings?

AeroGarden Strawberry Setting:
15 Hours Lights On (day)
9 Hours Lights Off (night)

AeroGarden Herbs/Basil Setting:
17 Hours Lights On (day)
7 Hours Lights Off (night)

So overall it’s an additional 2 hours of light, which should mean our plants grow faster. I will keep you all updated on my progress.

]]> http://www.aerogrowreview.com/aerogarden-strawberry-kit/feed http://www.aerogrowreview.com/how-much-electricity-does-the-aerogarden-use http://www.aerogrowreview.com/how-much-electricity-does-the-aerogarden-use#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:35:02 +0000 Aerogrower http://www.aerogrowreview.com/?p=13 One question I get asked a lot from visiting friends and families is “How much hydro does the AeroGarden use?”. This is a perfectly understandable question, especially since electricity prices are going up and we are constantly being reminded to be more environmentally responsible.

Well to answer your question. Not very much, here in Canada I pay 8.7 cents per kilowatt hour (1000 kilowatts) during peak times and as low as 2.3 cents on weekends and during the night. So assuming you have an AeroGarden Classic, you are using up roughly 32 watts per hour, if you have the AeroGarden Deluxe or any of the more recent Pro models then you are using 64 watts per hour.

This breaks down to:

AeroGarden Classic : 31.25 hours of use for 8.7 cents of hydro (assuming maximum price)
AeroGarden Deluxe & Pro: 15.62 hours of use for 8.7 cents of hydro (also assuming maximum price)

For arguments sake let’s say your garden has it’s lights on for 13.75 hours a day, 365 days of the year. This gives us a total usage of 5018.75 hours. Ok, we’re almost done so don’t fall asleep on me yet!

The Classic model would use 160.6 kilowatt hours costing me $13.97
The Deluxe or Pro model’s would use 321.30 kilowatt hours costing me $27.95

Overall it’s not a very scary number.

Now before I continue I should warn you that I cannot guarantee that everyone will have the same results as I did so please don’t blame me if your plants are affected.

Well I did some research into the types of bulbs and how they are affected over time. It turns out that compact fluorescent bulbs generally last upwards of 15,000 hours and after 5 years output roughly 70-80% of the light they produced when they were first used.

So I decided to test this information out for myself, since my bulbs were already near the 6 month mark I simply left them in and made a weekly record of how my plants were behaving.

I can’t say I noticed any difference in my existing plants, however once I started with a new cherry tomato seed kit it did seem to take an extra week for the plant to start blossoming. Unfortunately when I was growing my first seed kit I didn’t think to keep careful notes so these results are very subjective.

Ultimately the cherry tomato plant’s grew well though the plant never seemed quite as fast growing, but the tomato’s don’t taste any different and the plants aren’t dieing. So I do believe you could use your AeroGarden grow bulbs for about a year without causing problems for your plants.

Inside each grow pod is a special sponge; this sponge contains the seed and the nutrients to get the seed growing and to later provide a surface for the roots to grow into. Essentially the sponge replaces the soil in outdoor gardens.

While this sponge is very different from one you would buy at your local hardware store that doesn’t mean it’s not available if you do some digging. I came across a very interesting site called FutureGarden that sells a number of products which can be used instead of the much pricier official Aerogrow products.

You can see the Perfect Start sponges here.

Now what makes these so great is you can purchase these sponges for as little as $9.95 for 100 sponges, then buy your seeds at a local store for next to nothing and now instead of having to pay $19.95 plus shipping every 6 months to grow a new garden you can have several years worth of AeroGardening for under $25

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!