I never thought that I would consider a garden to be one of my favorite tech gadgets. When I first saw my wife’s AeroGarden l thought something along the lines of, “That’s dumb, I can setup a grow light and some small pots for a few bucks”. I freely admit my initial impression was a big mistake. Do you remember that seen in Back to the Future II when future Marty grabs some fruit from a garden that popped down out of the ceiling?
The AeroGarden is that thing, a personal hydroponic garden system. If I were so inclined, I could make a mount to lower it out of the attic through the ceiling and match the movie perfectly. Water and liquid plant food are stored in a resovior and a pump circulates the solution through the plant’s roots on a scheduled basis. Each seed pod contains a vegetable, herb, or flower marked with the height of the plant, a greenhouse dome, and enough solid growing medium for the roots to take off in.
All the farmer needs to do is add the water and food as directed and place the pods in the holes. Tall stuff goes in back, short stuff up front. You pop the little plastic domes on top of each pod to keep the temperature up while the seedlings germiniate and you’re off to the races. Within a few days you’ll have baby plants all over the place.
The full spectrum LED lights are mounted on a stalk that allows them to be raised as your plants grow. The model of your unit determines the size of plants that you can grow. The larger farms can handle up to twenty-four plants and have motorized light panels that can raise up to thirty-six inches. The smallest hold two plants and go to twelve inches.
Lights on the front of our unit tell us when to add water and food but some are app enabled. The lights stay on for fifteen hour cycles and we’ve found that purposefully timing it so the lights are on in the evening makes a nice night-light in our kitchen. Our system came as a kit that included six different herbs and the plant food. We had seedlings in four days. I intend on writing a follow up post once we’re able to havest something, so check back later.
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