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Courtesy of, I think, a Mother’s Day sale, I decided this year to get not one, but two Aerogardens in the hopes that growing my own salad fixings would soon be cheaper than buying them… especially given the tendency to take long enough to eat certain produce that half of it rots.

And I have on multiple occasions reminded myself just how much of a beginner I am.

Last year I’d bought a Sprout model based on it being both the smallest model due to lack of shelf space but also the cheapest… and proceeded to fill it with cherry tomatoes, plants that grew tall enough to push against the light panel.

Hindsight being 20/20, I can’t help but wonder if it quit working when it did because I’d unknowingly let it dry out and simply needed to add water, but at the time I’d operated under the assumption that the pressure from the plants had literally broken it, and I’d returned it for a refund.

This decision left me with several seed pods with nowhere to plant them. This year, we had more shelf space due to changes in furniture my parents had made and (presumably) learning my lesson I took advantage of the sale on the Harvest XL. (Honestly if we had the shelf space for it I’d buy a second one.)

There I proceeded to fill it–every spot–with those same leftover cherry tomato seed pods. Only afterwards did I learn that you’re only supposed to put two of them in there due to how big around they get so once the weather allowed we transplanted four of them outdoors.

Never thought to take pictures from last year but the plants from this year’s attempt are a decent size now! Just not… edible yet.

(Shown: Golden Harvest, left, and Mighty Mini, right. Look closely and you might be able to spot the blossoms on the Golden while actual tomatoes are obvious on the Mighty. Not shown: plugs for the empty holes to protect against bacteria… waiting for those to arrive.)

Not long afterwards I decided to buy another Sprout to grow spinach (courtesy of the “grow anything” seed pods) and mint… one for food and the other for the scent. In addition I bought an outdoor hydroponics garden for more spinach plants.

Here we have my attempts at seven different spinach plants (mint was in the middle of the Aerogarden before I transplanted it to the pot in front) of five different breeds: Odd, given that I’m reading that spinach is harder to grow indoors, that the only one that’s growing is one of the Aerogarden plants.

(Photos taken June 15, prior to harvesting the single spinach plant but after transplanting the mint became necessary due to the spinach blocking the light. Still looking for a good place in the kitchen to move that pot since the whole idea is using the scent for an ant repellent.)

And the same spinach again post-harvest, alongside of another mint (planning to transplant this one outside my bedroom window because the scent is also useful for migraines) and my last lavender seed pod (also for ant-repelling reasons–tried planting some directly in the dirt outdoors but the squirrels helped themselves instead) Both herbs are sprouting but the lavender is so much newer that it was hard to get a good angle to show it.

(Photos taken July 3.)

The spinach I grew wasn’t bad overall but some of the odder-textured leaves also had an odd taste to them; makes me feel like I might’ve waited too long to harvest given what I’m reading about the stuff “bolting” and how that affects pre-existing leaves. Still, I consider it enough of a success that my next experiment is simply to see how well it grows back. And at some point next year I may invest in a raised garden bed that uses actual soil instead of relying on the hydroponics thing, just so it’s easier to refill when the growing medium inevitably needs replacing.

Going back to the “I wish I had more shelf space for another Harvest,” I’d like to look into growing yet more spinach options so I can harvest it sooner, like when it’s actually small enough to be baby spinach, without taking out an entire plant. I can add bought greens to the stuff I’m growing but I don’t want to….

My strawberries, however… are very sad….

And of course it’s too late in the year to easily buy more seedlings. Plenty of flowers to be found but very few to none of the foodstuffs that I actually want.

In my case the whole benefit of an Aerogarden isn’t space–it’s actually easier in that sense to grow everything outdoors because we have a decent-sized yard in a rural area and don’t have a lot of shelf space for these devices. No, it’s simply the amount of work to be done. Certainly I have to take into account the need for pollinating those cherry tomatoes at some point, and I have to add water and the plant food instead of relying on Mother Nature to do that part for me… but there’s no weeding, a lot less exposure to bugs and critters (hello squirrels!), and it’s all kept in as controlled an environment as the inside of my house can be.

Oh, and I can (in theory) get the fresh produce I want grown locally at any time of the year, and not be too limited to the whims of the weather. Especially nice when I live in a winter wonderland.