late night infomercial hooked me - aero garden

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malkore

malkore

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so, does anyone have one of these Aero Gardens?
(http://www.aerogrow.com/)

Woke up Friday at 2am to a 5 minute infomercial about it. I am my father's son...a sucker for gadgets, especially if the opportunity to experiment with the gadget is obvious.

Basically its an automated hydroponic drip system to grow herbs, cherry tomatoes, chili peppers (hell yeah!), lettuce, or flowers in your kitchen.

I got one for SWMBO to play with cuz she has a few house plants that barely do it. But if it all pans out, I might have a true aeroponic setup next fall, so I can get certain veggies (like tomatoes) all winter long.

Anyone else do that?
 
Someone posted a time lapse photography on one of these a few weeks ago.
 
Sounds good, but if you really paid attention to what they were saying you would have picked up on that you have to buy/use their "special" seeds.

I bet you that's where the real money is spent.

Want to trade magic beans for your cow? Now where have I heard that before...
 
you think thats impressive yah should see what i can do with $200 worth of supplies and some seeds from Canada or Amsterdam :D unfortunately my wife put an end to that 6 years ago :(

hydroponics is fun to mess with.........though a pain over soil.......gave up growing various house plants like that cause a power outage means bad news with most setups. hydroponics leaves lil room for screw ups where generally you have a week to fix a problem in soil, you have 12-24 hours to fix it in most hydro setups.......that said ive never had my hands on the AeroGarden so cant comment on it specifically.......also a thing to remember is that all things taste better out of soil than with hydro, hard to use organic fertilizers in hydro and believe it or not that does affect the taste of the fruit or whatever else is produced via hydro and chemical ferts. but my wife has seen the commercials and thinks she wants to try it so she can have fresh cherry tomatoes all winter..........thinking i can rig up something for her for about $30.....wont look as nice but it will work :drunk:
 
My wife gave me one for Xmas. I've been growing one of the herb mixes. Works good. No hassle. It would take more than one to have enough of whatever particular herb you wanted to use to have enough at the same time.

I just cut off the tops of them all and throw it in the pot !
 
homebrewer_99 said:
Sounds good, but if you really paid attention to what they were saying you would have picked up on that you have to buy/use their "special" seeds.

I bet you that's where the real money is spent.

Want to trade magic beans for your cow? Now where have I heard that before...
Click to expand...
You don't have to buy their seed pods.

That would get expensive, but you just need to place 4-5 seeds in your existing pods, because that's all Aerogrow does with their pods.
 
their seeds arent "special.......with the tomatoes and such they are just dwarf varieties..........with a lil searching and research you could use other seeds just fine
 
I made a chicken salad yesterday for lunch with cilantro and a pinch of purple basil from my Aerogarden - it was delicious.

SWMBO and have been eating a lot of caprisa too with Mozzarella we have from Sorento and fresh basil from the Aerogarden.
 
Mine's really starting to take off. This pic was taken AFTER harvesting a bunch of herbs. That weird looking purple basil leaf was the victim of a scissors accident, not bugs. So far, we're really impressed!

aerogarden.JPG
 
Yeah, I posted this before, but mine didn't do anything. Only the two varieties of basil grew, nothing else made an effort. The green basil tastes disgusting, too. Like eating straight cloves.

I'm gonna try again with some more seeds, but until then it's still getting a thumbs down from me.
 
PseudoChef said:
Yeah, I posted this before, but mine didn't do anything. Only the two varieties of basil grew, nothing else made an effort. The green basil tastes disgusting, too. Like eating straight cloves.

I'm gonna try again with some more seeds, but until then it's still getting a thumbs down from me.
Click to expand...

The mint and something else in ours didn't make it. Everything else grew like crazy. The problem I have is that all of the herbs were tasteless. It's getting a thumbs down from me as well.
 
I got one for my mom for Christmas a year or two ago. Hers did great.

Now if you want a DIY approach look at this
http://www.instructables.com/id/Hydroponics---at-Home-and-for-Beginners/

I built 2 using some $3 10 gallon rubbermaid containers and a $10 aquarium pump that has 2 outputs. Total build cost was about $30 with another $30 spent on grow medium and fertilizer. I got strawberries in one that are so juicy I have red stains on my shirt right now from where I picked and ate one this morning (never had juice squirt out of a strawberry before) and my cantaloupe and watermelon plants are growing like crazy in the other one.

I keep mine outside you'd have to buy some lights if you wanted to do it indoors. But theres a lot of hydroponic plans out there that can be built for alot less than the aerogarden.
 
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