Arrowgarden Smart Garden
MSRP $ 165.00
“The Aerogarden Smart Garden offers all the benefits of owning a garden, but nothing of the dirty work on your knees.”
Professional
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This makes it almost easier to grow something
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Manages all the water for you
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Grow light accelerates the growth rate
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You have to choose from different types of plants
Cons
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Harvest model is not compatible with an app
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Can be a bit difficult to clean
Do you like home cooking and want fresh herbs at your fingertips? Are you looking for easy access to basil for pesto or to make Jared Marinara Sauce? Then a smart garden can be the thing you need – in particular, the Aerogarden Smart Garden.
This unit is designed to make all assumptions from growing plants. I’m pretty convenient in the garden (actually, I’ve got a potato crop that will be ready for harvest in about a week), but I’ve never been able to keep the herbs alive. Chives, basil, rosemary, no matter – I do Willpower Find ways to kill them.
I’m the guy who tests herbs under the bed.
But Aerogarden has made it possible for me to grow a really impressive herbal crop that I kept on hand for six months. I collected multiple yields from it before the trees became very large and moved to the ground.
What’s in the box?
Arrowgarden Smart Garden comes in three different models: Harvest, Harvest 360 and Harvest Slim. The primary difference between these models is how many plants they support.
The arugardine is mostly assembled out of the box – you just fill it with water and plant food, insert the seed pods and let it work.
I have the Harvest model, which supports up to six different trees. The box includes everything you need to get started, including pre-planted seed pods, plant food and instructions.
Setup only takes a few minutes. It is mostly collected outside the box – you just fill it with water and plant food, insert the seed pods and let it work.
How smart is Erogarden?
AeroGarden works on an internal timer. A series of LED Grow Lights on a telescoping, adjustable stand will glow in the trees for 15 hours every day. Once you plug in the device, it sets the time to turn on the lights, but it can be adjusted as needed.
I set myself up to shine mostly overnight, but be warned: these lights Bright. After all, they’re supposed to mimic sunlight. If you live in a studio apartment, this may not be the best option for you unless you can safely block it.
An internal pump conducts water across the seed pods. When the water level is low, the light will come on until you refill it to the proper level. At the beginning of the growth cycle, I need to refill the water about once a week. Towards the end, when my plants were fully mature, it was about once a day.
You need to feed two pieces of plants every two weeks. The fertilizer comes in a small bottle that is easy to move behind the smart garden so you can keep track of it easily.
Can you increase?
You don’t plant your own seeds, though I guess you can with enough effort. Aerogarden sells pre-planted seeds of different varieties. When I started, I had Genoves Basil, Thai Basil, Lavender, Parsley, Thyme and Dill.
There are more than 120 plant varieties to choose from among the flowers, herbs and real vegetables. Before writing this, I removed all the herbs from my garden and planted a set of summer salad greens, but you can plant cherry tomatoes, microgreens, bok choy and much more.
Basil has grown almost very well and thyme has stopped breathing.
After planting, you place a small plastic lid on top of the pod. This helps to keep the seeds inside until they germinate. When the shoot is long enough to touch you remove the lid.
Different plants grow at different rates. The dill I planted grew faster than anything else, but the two varieties of basil overtook it faster. In fact, they have grown Too Well – I actually lost my thyme because the basil roots make it suffocate.
Seed pods are guaranteed a shoot. In fact, if it doesn’t germinate, you can contact AeroGarden for a replacement. It only happened to me with one of my trees, and it was because (I guess) the seed fell from the pod. Everything else grew, though thyme did not survive.
Daily operation
I like things that you can set up and forget about. For the most part, Aerogarden is just that. It manages plant watering and fertilization. All I had to do was do a little maintenance every few days. The smart garden lived on my countertop in my kitchen, making it perfect for a spaghetti sauce with a few basil leaf pinches or some lavender for making tea.
It’s not smart in the traditional sense. As I said, there was no app on my phone to send push notifications or growth reports – but it was certainly effective enough that it held a proud place in the kitchen since I set it up just after Christmas.
Our acceptance
Arrowgarden Smart Garden is a great, affordable starting point for a smart garden. For just 165, it makes it easy to keep fresh vegetables, herbs or even flowers in a small space. This can be inferred from growing up, even for those who are the most black.
Is there a better option?
Right now, we’re seeing an explosion of smart gardens. There are half a dozen different options available at Click and Grow Smart Garden, The Rise Garden, and the Garden of Eden, among others. There are even options like the Guardin that are as big as a bookshelf and can hold up to 30 plants. There are many options, but whether they are “good” is a matter of choice.
How long will it last?
I’ve been using Arrowgarden Harvest since just after Christmas and it’s still getting stronger. If you take care of them through regular pruning, the individual plants can survive for a very long time and the hardware has a limited one year warranty that fixes production defects.
Will you buy it?
Absolutely, especially if you don’t have your own garden. Living in an apartment, Aerogarden gave me easy access to fresh herbs and really brought some spice to my cooking (the irony is absolutely purposeful).
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