Saturday, April 18, 2009

Aerogarden Seedlings - Update

It's been three weeks now and I'm really impressed with how well the Aerogarden 'seed starting' thing has worked. I have herbs, flowers, veggies (tomatoes and peppers and and eggplant) and fruits (chiqi huckleberry and sunberry) in there, and several empty spaces.

You are supposed to trim these so there is only one seedling per slot but so far I haven't had the heart. I added extra 'nutrient tablets' to the water yesterday so maybe that could help a little, make up for having too many plants stuffed in each tiny space.

I thought that having the light so far away would never work, and thought they would be spindly and leggy. But they are amazingly robust. And I might add, they are much bigger than they would be at 3 weeks in soil. The literature said it would be that way but I guess it still surprised me!

Here's a current pic as of today:

Aerogarden Seedlings Seed Starting for Gardens

Not bad at all!!

PJ

4 comments:

KMG said...

Do you think this product could be effectively used without pre-made Aerogarden products? I don't like to be tied to a particular manufacturer and prefer DIY stuff, but damn, I want one of these.

PJ said...

Maybe it could be done DIY. I mean, I have had cycling interest in "hydroponic" gardening but it was a fortune and a pain in the ass. This basically just took the process and put it in a small, more affordable, "E-Z" format for sale.

The normal aerogarden (not for seed starting) uses these 'pods' pre-seeded. However there is a version you can buy where the light lifts up to 2' high above it and you can use any seeds you want. I have the original smaller version. The seeds for this are my own, I only got the little styrofoam 'insert' to use in place of the 'pod area'.

The pod area does "water circulation" for the regular Aerogarden. The seeds don't have that... this just sits in water.

I bet if you google something like hydroponic or aerogarden self made diy you might find someone clever showing how to do something similar. Until the Aerogarden the only way to do hydroponic WAS "diy" after all! It's just that it was usually much bigger more expensive setups.

Best,
PJ

AeroGarden King said...

You might want to check out www.AeroGardenReviews.org - they sometimew post DIY info on the AeroGarden.

Carla said...

What cool progress report! Where will you be planting them?