Customer Reviews:
 Great gift January 9, 2007
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I bought this as a gift for a friend who likes to cook, and he raves about it. The AeroGarden performs as advertised, and it was easy to set up. Although it's a bit pricey, if you don't like to garden or don't have a garden, and you like to cook, you'll love this.
Awesome little garden! It's so much fun to watch it grow :-) January 9, 2007
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I got my Aerogarden back in December, 2006. I have been seeing it sprout very well from when I first started using it December 18th to be exact. I'm almost to the point of clipping back the branches to let it grow even further. I'm so excited as I got the cherry tomato kit...
My only cons are that the light it needs to grow under is extremely bright as another poster mentioned here. I wish they would have perfected it so it wouldn't bother us being so bright. If you have a place where you can keep it out of your sight it will help. If I had a larger place I'd have gotten 2 Aerogardens for sure!
IT is a bit expensive I think as well... But on the upside you could order it at Aerogarden's website with 3 installments of $49.99 which I am currently under here. So in that way that helps make it affordable.
Also they need to make it even a possibly cuter design... Maybe they are working on this? LOL...
Also wondering if they'll make it so we can grow more then one "kit" at a time too? That would be great as well.
I hope you'll get this! Like I said if I had a bigger place I'd get 2. You'll love to watch it grow quick!
Dinner and a show January 5, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
We bought ours just before Christmas and plugged it in on December 27. The chives and basils sprouted after just 3 days and we've seen visible growth in the few hours from when we come home from work to when we go to bed. Seven days into the project and we're seeing signs of life in the "Sprouts in 8-14 days" pods.
The documentation is excellent. It has simple clear diagrams and easy to follow language. And the instructions appear in multiple places, so you don't have to worry about losing the manual.
We bought the white model retail for the same price before tax and it came with a $20 mail-in rebate, but you had to buy two to get the deal.
Amazing Product January 3, 2007
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
I bought this for my wife for Christmas and we both are amazed at the quality of this product. Our first 'planting' was tomatoes and 4 days later we have sprouts. This is easy to use with no mess.
The only thing I'd like to see done differently is the ability to grow multiple products (i.e., tomatoes, salad, herbs) at the same time. Currently, you can only grow the same item at one time.
Update: 3 months later
This thing is noisy. The pump is making an awful racket and am afraid it will fail soon...have contacted the manufacturer for a replacement and I hope the customer service horror stories I've seen so far have been resolved.
Works as Advertised - Classy Product November 28, 2006
550 out of 556 found this review helpful
see update at end of review
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I was lamenting about only having frech lettuce, herbs, chives, and tomatoes from may garden during the long fall-winter-spring parts of the year. The refrigerated stuff from the grocery store goes bad right away and does not taste as good as the fresh stuff from the garden, either.
Then I saw a Time Magazine page on the new AeroGrow AeroGarden, and I just had to try it out. After reading the AeroGrow website before making the purchase, I realized that buying one garden would not work for me, as the tomatoes cannot be grown in the same garden as lettuce & herbs. This is partially due to the large amount of room taken up by the tomatoes, and also because the lamp/watering cycle is different and finally because the nutrients are different.
So, I bought two gardens, along with the Salad Greens seed kit and Cherry Tomato seed kit. Each garden comes with a mixed herb kit, so I figured to mix in a few herbs with the other seeds, and if they did not work, no big loss.
The products came quickly and the instructions for assembly were very clear and well written with excellent diagrams. I came to realize that this somewhat pricey product at least comes from a company that produces a classy product (a rare thing these days). I found a space on a shelf beside the basement stairs, and placed both assembled gardens there. I also bought and placed a digital thermometer with maximum/minimum temperature memory readouts ($10 at Radio Shack), because I was unsure of what temperature extremes the plants might experience in that location (68-72 as it turns out).
The seed kits contain pre-seeded planting pods. Each pod is basically a plastic cup shaped frame with two pieces of foam rubber inside the cup part, like two slices of bread with the seeds sandwiched between them. They simply insert into the seven holes in the top of the garden's water tank. The Salad Greens and Herbs come with seven pods per kit, while the Tomatos come with three pods plus four hole plugs-the plants are bigger so three of them take up thw whole space available. The hole plugs prevent evaporation of the water through the unoccupied holes.
The water tank holds exactly one gallon of regular drinking water. Well water is not recommended, presumably because of impurities, and since I am on a well I bought two one-gallon plastic jugs of 'drinking water' at the store for 50 cents each and filled the tanks with their contents. A pump in the tank takes water and pipes it to the rim of each of the seven holes in the tank's top, and here the trickle of water flows into the foam sandwich of each seed pod. The foam stays moist and the rest of the water drips back down into the tank. The garden's 'computer' cycles the water flow on and off according to the amount recommended for the type of plant being grown. A water level sensor turns on a flashing red light when it is time to add more water to the tank.
The top of the garden is a reflector with two compact-fluorescent lamps, of the variety that has the special ultraviolet (UV) coating that causes the emmitted light to resemble sunlight. The reflector rides on a vertical pole that extends up from the garden's base, so you can raise and lower the lamps as required to keep them the correct distance above the plants. The garden's 'computer' also turns the lamps on and off according to a schedule tailored to the type of plant. If using the gardens in a place where the light might be a problem at night, you can syncronize the computer so that the lights are on only during the daytime and off when you are trying to sleep.
The seed kits come with little clear plastic cups that cover each pod until the seeds have germinated, then you can dispose of them. The kits also come with a bag of nutrient tablets, which you add to the water tank when the computer prompts you to by flashing a red light. The nutrients are tailored to the type of plant being grown, and there are enough of them to feed the plants during their anticipated life span.
I planted one garden with five salad green (leaf lettuce) pods, plus one pod each from the Herb kit, chives and parsley. The other garden got the threee pods from the Cherry Tomato kit; two reds and one yellow variety.
Each seed pod has a label that tells you how many days to wait for plants to appear after germination. All of my plants appeared like clockwork.
I have had the gardens for about six weeks now, and have been enjoying salads containing lettuce, parsley and chives plus other odds and ends from the fridge, for the last two or three weeks. The lettuce and herbs are all beautiful, with no problems from bugs or too much/too little water, excessive temperatures, etc. No need to wash the plants or check for bugs or pick off bad spots, everything goes straight to the salad bowl. What a joy! Even with only five lettuce plants, I have to eat two meals including salad each day to keep up with the growth. This would easily feed two people, and if all seven salad green pods had been used, three people.
The tomatoes are all doing well ahnd have been pruned according to instructions. It will be some time yet before they produce flowers, and then fruit. But based on the health of the plants, I expect a good yield.
Each seed kit comes with a full color manual/booklet that covers all aspects of 'planting', germinating, feeding, pruning (if required) and then harvesting the plants. There are also photos of plants where things have gone wrong (leaves burned because the lamps were not raised up as the plants grew taller, etc) with clear instructions on how to recognize problems and correct them. Harvesting instructions clearly tell how much can be taken at a time without killing the plant, and so on.
The AeroGrow gardens are a well designed, well built product with excellent documentation. All my visitors are amazed at how well the product works, and many have gone out and bought their own. I anticipate years of improved eating because of this product.
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Update November 2007
I used my two gardens all Winter (2006/2007) until it was time to start getting produce from my real (outdoor) garden in the Summer, at which time I put the little gardens to rest for the season. During their use, I got a large crop of cherry tomatoes, all of which were beautiful. I went through on crop of lettuce and salad greens, and when the lettuce finally bolted, I replanted with only lettuce (no chives, etc this time) and got another couple of months worth of lettuce. I have now fired them up again in the Fall, and have nice little plants popping up. Aerogrow has more seed options available now, so I have planted a more interesting kind of lettuce.
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