Chris Planted a “Garden”

I wanted some herbs to use year round for cooking instead of going to the grocery store. We tried to grow herbs on the window sill, but they kept dying. I’ve never tried to grow anything before, so I did a bunch of research and the Aerogarden system seemed to get good reviews.

The Aerogarden system is a soil free system that pretty much does everything for you. The units come in different sizes based on the number of pods you want to grow. The pods are little plastic upside pyramids with “grow sponges” in them. You can order pre-seeded pods, or a grow your own kit that come with the sponges and you add the seeds yourself.

I originally purchased a 6 pod kit to try it out with a herb pod package. I assembled the kit when it arrived, filled it with water, added the pods with lids to add a greenhouse effect for the seeds, poured the appropriate amount of nutrients into the unit from a bottle that came with the seed kit, and turned the unit on. It automatically turned on the grow lights and asked me what kind of pods were added. It then setup a schedule for the lighting system (on 18 hours a day) and set a reminder for the next feeding (2 weeks).

Each pod listed the expected amount of days it would take to sprout. (the picture above has two different kinds of mint , chives, rosemary, and Thai chili peppers that were planted at different time) Each pod sprouted around the time it was supposed to and we had herbs! However, they loved water and I was filling the unit several times a week. I started designing a water storage and delivery system in my head that would cut back on the watering intervals.

The system worked well, so I got a bigger one for salads that had two compartments with 12 pods each, as shown below. (This one has Thai basil, mini jalapenos, mini tomatoes, and a couple of leafy greens.) They also had a supplemental water storage system for the original unit I picked up as well (The water bottle in the picture above.) Yippppeeee! I don’t have to build something that won’t work.

Here’s the control panel for the larger unit:

Here are some freshly planted pods:

Here they are after a couple of weeks:

A few weeks later:

Now we have some salad: