Aerogarden pods not sprouting – If your seeds sprouted but your plants aren’t growing or look sick, it’s not because they’re “bad.” Either they’re not getting something they need or they’re getting something they don’t.
There are many questions as to why their AeroGarden mint not growing, so we’ve also made a solution for that. If you have other pods, check the following:
Table of Contents
Reasons Why Your AeroGarden Pods Not Sprouting
Lights
When starting a new seed kit, set the Grow Light Hood as low as it can go on the Light Post. Many of the Herb and Flower kits have a mix of seeds that grow to different heights and take different amounts of time to sprout.
It is important to cut back the tallest and fastest-growing plants at the top so that the Light Hood can stay in the lowest position for the shortest and slowest-growing plants. This makes sure that every plant gets the light it needs to grow. Trim no more than a third of a plant at a time. Just snip the top of tall plants to keep them an inch or two below the lights.
After six months of use, you should get a new CFL (compact fluorescent light). Even though they may still look bright, they lose a lot of their full-spectrum light as time goes on. For a plant to grow, it needs to get enough energy from the red and blue parts of the light spectrum that we can’t see. They can’t grow without that energy.
The red, white, and blue “pinpoint” lights under the hood are made of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which will last 3 to 5 years.
Pump/Aerator
Your AeroGarden’s pump or aerator/bubbler gives oxygen to the roots of the plants. If the water isn’t being aerated, the plants’ roots won’t be able to send enough oxygen up to the leaves. The plants will slowly die until they fall over.
AeroGardens have ways to get oxygen into the water, and you should check the pump or aerator every so often to make sure it is working. Before the final collapse, the plants give us weeks of notice that something is wrong. If you check the pump or aerator every time you add water or nutrients, you’ll be able to fix any problems before they cause damage to the plants that can’t be fixed.
Nutrients
When you plant your seed kit and every two weeks after that, add liquid nutrients to the water bowl. On each bottle of nutrients is a feeding chart that tells you how much to add for your AeroGarden model.
It is not a good idea to add more or less than what is asked for. Nutrients should only come in liquid form, and they haven’t been made in tablet form since 2009. If you use tablet nutrients, the active ingredients have been used up for a long time, so the plants won’t get the food they need to grow and sprout.
Poor Growth
If you’ve checked all of the above (water, lights, air flow, and nutrients) and your plants’ growth is still slow or their leaves are turning yellow or brown, there could be other reasons:
1) The amount of nutrients in your solution is now too high. This can happen if your source water contains a lot of dissolved minerals or if your Seed Kit has been growing for a long time without being rinsed and refilled. When there is an imbalance of nutrients, the leaves usually turn yellow or the edges of the leaves turn brown. If the problem isn’t fixed, the plant can die. By doing a Rinse-and-Refill, you can fix this problem.
2) There are a lot of insects on your plants. If you think you might have bugs on your plants, click here for more information on how to fix the problem.
3) The water temperature has gone up to at least 80 degrees. If you put your AeroGarden in a window that gets a lot of sun, the water can get hot and the oxygen in the water bowl can get very low. Move the AeroGarden to a place that is cooler and has more shade.
3) One of your plants or their roots is sick. Plants grown in an AeroGarden are not immune to diseases that spread through the air or through the soil. However, because they live in a protected environment indoors, diseases are much less of a problem. Plant pathology is a big field, and unless an expert looks at a piece of plant tissue under a microscope, you can’t know for sure what disease is hurting your plant. But the following plant diseases can affect indoor plants:
The Tobacco Mosaic Virus makes the leaves of tomatoes and peppers look mottled with yellow and green. It is on almost all tobacco products, like cigarettes and chewing tobacco, and most smokers carry it on their hands and clothes. Once plants are hurt, there is no way to fix it. People who use tobacco shouldn’t smoke around the plants or touch them.
Powdery mildew shows up as a gray or white powder on the surface of leaves. This causes the leaves to shrink, crumple, and dry out. It can hurt almost any plant, but dill is its favorite. Powdery mildew can be stopped with a spray that contains sulfur and is sold at most nurseries and garden centers.
Pythium is a microorganism that lives in soil and can cause root rot. In soil, other microorganisms usually keep it in check, but if it gets into an AeroGarden by accident, it can overgrow and cause root rot and death of the plant. (If you also garden in soil and have been working in your garden recently, make sure you wash your hands well to get rid of any soil before working with your AeroGarden.)
Pythium could be to blame if your plants suddenly start to wilt from the bottom up or if the stalks are pinched at the base. There is no way to stop it, and if your plants are dying from the bottom up, you should throw away all the plant parts and give your AeroGarden a very, very thorough cleaning.
This “root disease” should not happen in the Pythium section if you rinse and refill, rinse the roots, and never fill the reservoirs past the fill line. ( See the instructions that came with your Seed Kit or click here for information on how to clean.
