How great is AeroGrow Customer Service?

So, the bad news is, that little snow pea that thought he could...thought he could...couldn't. The little green seedling eventually wilted under the Aerogarden lights. And on of the Mescluns never even sprouted. So out of 14 pods, 12 grew and these two did not:

I went onto Aerogarden's site and submitted a message to their Customer Service telling them that these two pods didn't grow.

Within a day, I got a very nice response from "Mary", who said that two new pods were on the way, along with some advice on how to grow them. And then I got another email with an order form saying that it had been shipped. How cool is that?

What a show off

So, here's an update on the herb Aerogarden:

The mint and the chives are doing well, while the dill is growing but a bit pale in color. The purple basil is not doing well at all--the leaves look very pale. The thyme looked that way too at first, but it's starting to perk up just a little.

In the meantime, talk about an overachiever. The basil has shot up and even hit the grow light (burning a few leaves in the process). Back when I started this blog, I would be hesitant to prune the plant, but after hundreds and hundreds of leaves by now, I happily chopped away. In fact, it was a very, very lovely complement to my Nutrisystem Chicken and Dumplings (don't worry, once I get more herbs I'll start cooking real things again, diet be darned)


The other gardens are doing fine. I looked up at the mesclun on the top shelf, and noticed that one of the lights had burned out.

I think this Aerogarden was the same unit that started this blog (which grew the International Basil kit) so it's had a good life. Luckily, I had some spare lights I had purchased at the Aerogarden Store. Voila, two working lights again.

Savings at Gardener's Supply Company

From time to time, Gardener's Supply Company will send me discounts to post on this site. Here's the latest: from now until 8/13, click through on the banner below and you'll get 10% off any order over $50. Great time to stock up on all your indoor herb needs, from potting soil to planters to rosemary trees (although I've given up trying to grow rosemary, as I'm evidently the grim reaper of rosemary plants!)

Building Trellises for the Snowpeas

So, it's always good to read the manual, right? I got these twisted wires in the package with my Aerogarden snowpeas, and I had no idea what to do with them.

Finally, I decided to give in and read the manual. It turns out that the wires are meant to provide support to the snowpea plants. And boy do they need them. I said in the last post that the plants were getting "tall", but that wasn't entirely accurate. They were spreading out all over the place, and the cool-but-just-a-little-creepy tiny little vines were starting to look for things to grab and wrap themselves around.

The instructions were pretty lo-tech. The first thing you do is wrap the pre-cut wire around your finger.

You then take your coil and put it on top of your growing plants. It turns out I was a little late--I was supposed to set these up when the plants were about 1 inch long, so I ended up gingerly wrapping the young plants inside the coil.

The plants look much happier standing up now. I needed to raise the lights a few more notches, but I think everything's back on track again now.

The mesclun is still doing well too.

While they're still young, I decided to start harvesting some of the leaves and eating them as part of a wholesome Nutrisystem meal. You can read about it in my other blog, Nutwiisystem.Com.

Welcome to the world, Snow Pea #7

Good news! While six other Snow Peas are sprouting nicely, there was one Snow Pea that refused to grow. In desperation, I decided to push the pea into the spongy material and lo and behold, a few days later a sprout appeared.

Here's what the peas look like today. They're growing so tall I had to raise the hood one notch already.

In the meantime, something odd is going on with the Aerogarden herbs. The plants are growing fine, but the thyme and the purple basil look like they're "burned" a bit. The light does seem exceedingly bright for such small plants, but I'm going to let them ride for a while and see what happens.

There was another odd situation with the Mesclun. I noticed the leaves started to get pretty thin and some even started browning. When I looked closely in the Aerogarden, I notice the pump stopped pumping! When I lifted the unit oh-so-slightly, the pump started going again. So I surmised that there was a problem with the contacts on the back of the unit (the one that had the corrosion which I tried to clean a few weeks ago). I took a piece of plastic wire and wedged it under the unit, and it seems to be working now.

Within a few hours of doing this, the leaves started to perk up a bit. Although there's still one pod that never grew.

Anyway, the light went off right on cue, so I added more nutrients and filled the water to the top.

Feeding the three new Aerogardens

It's kind of nice to have the Aerogardens up again. I like coming home late at night and having my apartment lit up, instead of having to grope through the darkness.

It's officially been two weeks now, which means it's time for the Aerogardens' first feedings. Right on cue, the lights started blinking.

For some strange reason, on two of the units the lights started blinking a few days ago. But let's see if pressing the "reset" button today will synchronize all three units again.

The unit on the top of the three-shelf unit is the Mesclun. So far, it looks preetty good, although there's still one pod which hasn't sprouted yet.


With the reliable Herb kit, all the plants are now officially sprouted. The chives and basil are especially active.

Some of the snow peas are growing huge, but there are still two pods which haven't sprouted yet. I hear that AeroGrow may replace pods which never sprout, so I'll give it a few days and if there's still nothing, I'll probably shoot them an email asking about that.

I fed the Herb Aerogarden first. I think the seed kit must be an older one, because the nutrient tablets are all in the same bag, and they're all moist and stuck together.

I really like the "individually wrapped" tablets in the snow pea and lettuce kits. Makes everything a whole lot cleaner. Here's a picture of me putting the tablets into the snow peas. You can see a healthy root system is already growing.

Snow Peas, Mesclun, and Herbs after 10 Days

So, I returned home from my trip yesterday after 10 days. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. I wasn't worried, at least not consciously. Subconsciously, maybe I was a little--somewhere in the middle of the trip I dreamed that all the plants had grown and choked under the plastic covers :)

I'm happy to say that my dreams did not come true. The first thing I did when I got to the door was run to the Aerogardens and check. The lights were all on, and I could hear the trickling of the water.



The herb Aerogarden was perfect. All of the herbs had come up, so I removed all the plastic hoods. Not unexpected. The basils had grown the most. The chives and parsley looked the saddest, but even they were up.

I checked the snow peas next. These plants were so strong that they pushed the plastic covers out of the way themselves. Out of seven pods, four had grown and three were still seeds. I'll give them a few more days to grow, but if they don't, I'll probably write to Aerogrow.

The pea plants were amazing. They reminded me of a tiny "Jack and the Beanstalk" because of the tiny vines coming off the plants. Coming out of the seed, part of it entered the sponge as root, while the other part grew tall.

The mesclun was also a pleasant surprise. Six of seven pods had sprouted.

Looking carefully at the leaves, the distinctive variations of mesclun leaves is already apparent. I'm looking forward to salads with these.

All in all, a good start. And best of all, the yellow fly traps didn't have any whiteflies on them, meaning the environment is clear of them.

One of the older Aerogardens had stopped pumping water, so I cleaned the metal contacts on the motor. Once I did that, it hummed along perfectly. Overall, a good start.