Product Review: Aerogarden

Now, this is a little strange for me to doing for my very first review, because honestly I am usually pretty much all about the all natural and organic as possible.  I do realize, however, some people are not as far along in their natural food journey as I am and even myself, I'm NOT a perfect eater. Having more green foods is better than none, so having them in your kitchen in the middle of the winter is better than having none there at all.  A stepping stone to the even better things, you can call it.

The Seed Pod Kit

I stumbled upon this goody on a local facebook yardsale site.  It's a 6 pod AeroGarden made by Miracle Grow ( my reason for hesitation..).  It retails for about $120-$150 new and I snatched it up for $30.  I thought, why not give it a try and see how it works.  The winter is dragging itself out and I didn't get my herbs in before a surprise frost last fall... so I figured hey why not.  (Some day soon I'll blog about my kitchen herb garden that I have here in the growing season.  It's splendid.)

I ordered the Gourmet Herb Pod Set from Amazon.ca.  It was here quickly, as per usual.  I love those guys!  I then set to work getting it ready.  To save you a long drawn out explanation:  I filled it with water, added the Miracle Grow, added the pods, put the tiny domes on them, turned on the lights and set it to Herbs.  That's it. The pods already have the seeds in them.  Since then I've been just watching.

5 Days after starting.

The herbs I have in there right now are Genovese Basil, Chives,  Mint, Cilantro, Dill, and Curly Parsley.  It also came with a second kind of basil, because it was a 7 pod set, so I`ll save that for later.

7 Days after starting 

As you can see, the first to show up was the basil.  All of the herbs stated they would sprout between 6-21 days.  Basil showed up after about 3, but it took a few days for some of the others to show up.  

8 Days after starting

The next to pop through was Dill.  Dill quickly started to touch the top of his tiny dome, so it was the first to be removed.  After that they all started coming in one by one.  The hubby and the kids have also enjoyed watching them to see what is happening.

Today`s progress is showed in the last picture `12 Days`.  They are coming right along.  Only Mint and Chives are left with their domes and once Chives stands up, probably tomorrow, his will come off as well.

12 Days after starting

So far my opinion of AeroGarden is good.  It`s a `set it and forget it` sort of thing, which is good for busy folks.  I wouldn`t say its any quicker than the old fashioned way, like I planted my tomatoes ( see my post on my tomatoes here), but if you don`t have time and want fresh herbs this might be great for you!  I also like that you can get other pod sets for the Aerogarden, such as cherry tomatoes.

I`ll update you all as progress continues!

Ps- Sorry about the formatting... tonight it has a mind of it`s own!