Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have 4 of these and I am very pleased with the product so far. I bought two from Costco during a sale, and two through Aerogarden on Black Friday when it was buy one get one 50% off. It's probably not cheaper than buying produce from the grocery store, but it has provided me with greens inside my house during the winter months, which was worth something to me. Setting these up was very easy, breaking down the boxes for recycling took longer than actually setting up the Aerogarden. I took the box pieces and wrapped them up with foil to prevent light from bleeding over to the neighboring aerogarden... the plants seem to love the extra light. Watering and adding the nutrients is very easy- the LED screen will tell you when you have to do either, though it is recommended you water often even without any notifications from the Aerogarden computer. I water my plants about once every three days now that they are so big. It really requires very little effort to water and add the nutrients, but it does take a bit of time to harvest/ prune your plants because they grow so quickly after week 3. This particular unit is very quiet, but I suggest finding a special spot for it anyway because the light can be disruptive. I have all four of my Aerogarden in the laundry room where I have motion sensor lights (as a result, the light in the laundry room is turned off for most of the day, which is better for the plants). I think the most important part of the review is the growing part, so I'm going to spend more time reviewing the seeds from Aerogarden. Let me begin by saying that I am extremely new to gardening, and that I have a black thumb and am very heavy handed. The Aerogarden is very forgiving and for that, I am very grateful. Tomatoes: You can see from my pictures just how far my plants have come in such a short time. I didn't even pollinate the flowers on my tomato plants and look! I have baby tomatoes growing! I would have pollinated the flowers (there were so many, and new ones are still showing up) but they never really open up, so I can't get to the pollen. If anyone has any advice for me, I would really appreciate it. I do prune these quite a bit, to make sure all three plants are of similar height, and that the leaves don't grow too far outside of the lamp hood. If you prune the plants early enough, they become thick and bushy rather than tall and lanky (which can be a problem). Mine are still growing taller everyday, which means I have to raise the lamp, but much slower than if I hadn't pruned the plants to slow down the process. Cascading Petunias: The cascading petunias are my pride and joy- they are growing like crazy. I do dislike pruning the cascading petunias because the leaves are extremely sticky, but I do anyway because it keeps the flowers growing. New ones keep popping up everyday. I was harvesting the flowers at first, and placing them into little mason jars, but the stems are so short that it's quite difficult to display them. I don't think I'm going to keep harvesting these because they look so pretty the way they are in their home. I was quite disappointed that they smell like nothing, I love fragrant flowers, and was expecting to room to smell amazing with so many flowers. Herbs: These is the custom herb kit- I do not like the pre-packed herb kit that Aerogarden sells. Why is it so hard to package an herb kit with common herbs: parsley, basil, chives, mint, oregano, thyme? I had two basil plants at first, but one got too big and the main stem was bent. I replaced it with the savory (you get a free herb pack with the Aerogarden), which is tiny right now but still growing strong despite all the giant plants around it. The chives look like it's nearing the end of its life...quite disappointing that it's almost done after such a short time. Is this common for chives? The parsley took a long time to establish but now it's gone nuts, I love it! I'm not doing anything special except pruning to keep the lamp low enough for all the plants, and only raising when I think I have to. Salad: I saved the worst for last. I hate my salad garden. I was promised variety, but I got a lot of the same stuff. I was hoping for mostly kale and lettuce (custom salad kit), but I really didn't get any kale and very little lettuce. The leaves are all very bitter and nasty-tasting. I wanted crisp- even when I rinse, dry and leave overnight in the fridge I still don't get a crisp salad. I love salad, and was very disappointed with this. It might be personal taste, so I want to make sure to mention that all of the seeds germinated and grew really fast- I was harvesting by week 3. It definitely grows enough for two people to have salad 2-3 times a week if you have the 7 pod. Still, I think it tastes nasty and I'm getting rid of this and trying something else...maybe the strawberries or the bell pepper plant. End Note: A few final thoughts...according to the instructions, you have to bleach the entire thing after one cycle of planting to prevent mold and fungi. I am not looking forward to that. I also wanted to give a shout out to Aerogarden's customer service. They guarantee all their seeds and will send you new ones if they do not germinate. I was lucky that all of mine germinated. I did email them quite a bit whenever I had questions, and they always responded within one day. Their customer service reps seem very helpful and genuine, and I hope it continues to stay that way. I also hope to see more edible varieties of Aerogarden seeds in the future, especially vegetables that you can cook. Edit: Cleaning this is a bit of a chore, but it's not too bad. You HAVE to sanitize the whole thing in when you change out your garden. The peskiest and most time consuming part is going through every crevice to pick out stray roots. You can take the pump out but you cannot take it apart- I find a toothpick is very useful for getting as much stray roots out as possible. To sanitize, you first get rid of all the roots, rinse the bowl and the cover, then fill the bowl almost all the way full and add 1/4 cup of chlorine bleach and run the salad cycle for a few mins. Then you have to rinse everything, fill it with water, and run the salad cycle for a few mins- you need to do this twice, and rinse with water in between. It sounds like a hassle, but picking out the roots was much more time consuming than the actual sanitizing part. I have decided to give the disgusting salad garden another try, hopefully I will get a better selection this time. I will update with results. Edit (8/9/2015): I'm still getting lots of tomatoes! They are so tasty that I just pluck them and eat them right away, I never bother to cook them or use them for anything. They also come in such small batches (probably 5-10 every 10 days or so) that it doesn't make sense to make sauce or salsa with this. The herbs have gone wild. I almost resent having to harvest the mint because it's gone insane. I will probably never grow mint again, it's a bit of work having to harvest so much mint so often. If you don't keep pruning the mint, it will outgrow all your other herbs, so it's best to do so. The oregano and thyme are still growing, but the quality of those have gone downhill. I will probably recommend using two different Aerogardens (perhaps the 3 pod ones) for short and tall herbs. Right now the light source is too far from the oregano and thyme because the basil, parsley, mint and chives are so tall. The savory never had a chance because all the other herbs were too established, one of the holes is just being covered with tape at the moment to prevent algae growth in the waterbowl. The petunias are still growing strong, they are starting to develop some mild fragrance- they smelled like nothing before. Very beautiful, but very sticky to touch. I will harvest a few and place them in mason jars, and they last about 5 days in the jars that are filled with only water. Now the salad- I gave it another shot and grew a whole other batch. Still disgusting. Did I mention I am an avid salad lover? I don't know if I just ended up with an unlucky selection both times, or if it's their leaves that are gross. Either way, I will never try the salad again! Aerogarden in general: with how established my plants are, I'm having to re-water about once every 3 days. Not bad at all. I love that there are no bugs in my house, and the plants are all very healthy still. The 4 units are all still working well, and very quietly too. I stand by my 5 star rating, and would recommend this to everyone. 10/15/2015 update: Tomatoes and petunias are still growing like crazy. I got lazy and stopped pruning the tomato plant for a while and it just exploded. I counted at least 10 more baby tomatoes growing today. The petunias smell really nice now, even though 2 of the 6 pods died a while back, the 4 just made up for the empty space and grew into it. You really can't tell that two of the holes have masking tape over them (note: never expose a hole to light, algae will grow...just cover the holes with tape). I unplugged the herbs and salad. I thought the salad was really disgusting, and I just got mad at the mint for growing uncontrollably :) I had to prune the mint plant so much, I was just getting these really long stems with 1 or 2 leaves on them. My smaller and medium sized herbs were also suffering from how tall the basil, parsley and mint became due to the light source being lifted farther and farther away from them. So here's a tip: plant your tall and small herbs separately! Since I am going to be travelling so much, I'm just going to turn everything off in December and re-start a garden in Jan. It's unfortunate because I think my tomato plants will live much longer than 2 more months!