Aero-garden, pros and cons

By Administrator on May 12th, 2008
Posted in Uncategorized |

Have you seen the ads for this gadget and thought about buying one for yourself or as a gift? If so, I hope that this article might help you.

I live in an area with quite cold Winters (zone 5a) and the poor light levels inside make it nearly impossible to grow anything but the few houseplants that require very little light. During the warm weather, I normally grow a small organic vegetable garden and a separate area for herbs. The Aero-garden looked like a possible solution to provide fresh culinary herbs during the winter season.

Its compact size and built-in grow lights certainly appealed to me, and I was curious about hydroponics as I’d never tried it before. The price was a bit high for us, but I finally decided to ask for one for Christmas as I thought that it made more sense than having my husband spend money on things that I neither wanted or needed. He made quite an effort to find one for me, but it was apparently a popular gift and all the stores around us were sold out. In the end, this worked out for the best as one of my brothers gave me a wine refrigerator and we already had one. We were able to return it and (with the help of a coupon) only paid about $16.00 extra to purchase my Aero-garden.

Here’s the first tip I can give you —- look at the instructions before you start taking the little plastic containers out of the box! They are supposed to be put into the unit in the same positions as they were in the box. (Of course, by the time I read those instructions I had no idea which herb had been in which position and just hoped for the best with the placement I’d done.)

Here are a couple of pictures of the plants as they first started to sprout and as they filled out the unit later on.

On the positive side, the unit worked as advertised and it was amazing to see how fast the plants grew. Of course there were no weeds and no bugs to deal with and we actually had trouble keeping up with the production of fresh herbs. (Now, if you want to make pesto, you would need to opt for the version with all basil, as there wouldn’t be enough basil available otherwise.)

Now we come to the “dark side”. The literature that was provided stated that the lights should be replaced at 6 months. It stated that although people might not be able to tell the difference in the level of light provided by the bulbs, the plants would suffer from lessened light. I, of course, intended to test that out; however, in practice, one of my bulbs apparently just burnt out and it’s barely been THREE months since I turned the machine on! My second criticism has to do with the offer of $50.00 worth of coupons that was included as an incentive for purchasers to “register” their Aero-gardens. I duly sent mine in, but chose to check the opt-out box that stated that I was NOT interested in receiving advertisements from them. I’ve been waiting quite a long time and no coupons have arrived. Could it be that I won’t receive them because I don’t want to be bombarded with more ads? The registration form certainly did not state that this would be the case (otherwise I certainly wouldn’t have bothered sending the form in in the first place!) I have been to their website today and copied their Customer Service e-mail and phone number, so will soon find out what their answers are to both of the above problems.

In case you’d like to see their offerings, the website address is
www.aerogardenonlinestore.com/