Which AeroGarden Indoor Garden is Right For Me? Is AeroGarden Harvest Slim Good?
AeroGarden changes the game. When you use hydroponics and strong grow lights together, it makes the perfect environment for sprouting seeds and growing herbs, vegetables, and flowers at home. But it might not be obvious how to choose the right AeroGarden. How much you can grow indoors depends on how much space you have and what you want to grow. You’ll need to know what each model can do and how that fits with what you want to do in your garden.
What’s in the AeroGarden Harvest Slim?
up to six plants 5 times quicker than soil
20W LED grow light for best lighting and full spectrum
Herbs, lettuce, tomatoes, and more can grow up to 12″ tall.
Touch-sensitive illuminated control panel & care indicators
Simple, automatic reminders for watering and feeding plants
How do AeroGardens Harvest work?
AeroGarden Harvest is made so that you can grow your own flowers, herbs, vegetables, or salad greens at home. All of the AeroGarden models can use our Seed Pod Kits. It’s fun and easy to plant seeds in seed pods. Just put the pre-seeded pods in your garden, add water, and the patented, specially made Liquid Nutrients. Most seeds sprout in 7–14 days, are ready to be picked in 4–6 weeks, and will keep giving you harvests for at least 6 months. There is no better or easier way to grow food indoors.
How do I cut back my herbs?
For your herbs to grow and stay healthy in your AeroGarden, you need to prune them. When the plants are about 2 inches tall, you can start cutting them back. We suggest cutting back only about a third of the plant at a time. Basil usually starts to grow within a week after being planted, and it grows quickly.
Make sure to prune your basil from the top as needed to keep the grow lights at the lowest position until all the herbs have a chance to catch up. Putting the grow light higher to make room for the basil can slow or stop the growth of herbs that are smaller or take longer to grow.
Can I grow more than one kind of plant at once?
Yes, you can grow different kinds of herbs, salad, vegetables, and flowers in your AeroGarden if you want to. If you are growing different kinds of plants, you should prune the taller and bushier ones as they grow to make room for the shorter and smaller ones and give them plenty of light.
How do I clean my AeroGarden so I can use it again?
For the best results, you should clean and sanitize your AeroGarden after each planting.
Pros:
Size: You don’t need a lot of space to put these gardens together. You don’t need much room on the counter to grow healthy plants.
Easy Setup–The setup is so easy that it’s silly. Choosing a Miracle-Gro full spectrum pod kit is all it takes. After that, you can add water and turn things on using the simple control panel.
Cons:
The light is very bright. Some people who buy the Aerogarden Harvest are surprised by how bright the light for indoor gardening is. It can be on for up to 15 hours a day, so find a place where it won’t bother anyone.
Customer Service–I don’t have any personal experience with Aerogarden’s customer service, but some reviews have said that it could be better. People have said that it is hard to get in touch with their customer service when they have questions or problems. Others have said that when they ask for a replacement seed pod because theirs didn’t sprout, they get it quickly.
Setup
After spending a few minutes reading the instructions and getting to know all the parts, I started putting the thing together.
The AeroGarden units are sold with the claim that they are very easy to put together and can be set up in just a few minutes. Even with help from the kids, it took me less than 15 minutes to set up two kits. Setup doesn’t need any tools.
I just took it out of the box and put it on the table on top of a kitchen towel, just in case it leaked.
We put the deck where the seed cells are, and we used the switch on the back of the lighting unit to move it up and out of the way. By making it as long as possible, we had enough room to work below it.
Then I put the water in the reservoir, which took 2.4 liters, or a little more than half a gallon, of water to fill. The water level indicator inside the unit is easy to see, so you don’t have to worry about filling the bowl too much or too little.
The front of the platform has an opening with a small lid that can be removed. This lets you pour the water in, or you can remove the platform if the opening is too small.
The directions say to use a spout-equipped container, such as a watering can. AeroGarden also sells a watering jug that does not leak.
We followed the directions and used distilled bottled water at room temperature to make sure we weren’t adding chlorine, salt, calcium, and metals from our very hard tap water.
Minerals and other impurities in hard, softened, or well water could damage the pump inside the unit over time.
According to the instructions, tap water may be fine in some cases, but distilled water is best because it creates the best pH balance when the plant food is added without adding anything else.
The instructions also recommend emptying the bowl monthly and refilling with fresh water, as the plant food and dissolved material can create a slimy residue or buildup.
It may be a little challenging to remove the deck when the plants attain a large size, because the roots can become thick and tangled inside the bowl.
After the unit was full of water, we installed the seed cells. They slid in easily, and soon they were all in place and soaking up water into the peat sponges.
You could also lift the platform, install all of the cells, and put it back into place all at once rather than adding them individually as we did.
After letting the sponges soak for a few minutes, I put the reusable and recyclable grow domes on top of each cell. These domes sit loosely on top of each cell and help keep humidity in.
The instructions say that the domes might not snap on, and that’s what happened to me. I didn’t have to pry them off or bother the seedlings in any way to take them off once the seeds started to grow.
After putting the cells in place, the instructions say to add two caps full of the liquid plant food that came with the kit to the water reservoir. I measured out two and poured them in. This was the only step where I needed a kitchen towel, because when you pour, the cap drips a little.
If you’d rather not have any possible spills, AeroGarden sells Easy Feed plant food dispensers in packs of three.
