Chili, Take Two

I recently went to the fabulous Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Being an indoor garden nut, every time I go to a botanical garden, I always try to seek out the herb garden.

Brooklyn's herb garden is phenomenal. One of the highlights is a huge patch of chili peppers. The variety of pepper seemed exactly the same as my erstwhile Aerogarden peppers, down the the shapes of the leaves. Difference, of course, is that there were a LOT of peppers.

This inspired me to get off my keister and replant those four Aerogarden pods once and for all. Again, taking the lessons learned from the last batch, I'm hoping that my indoor gardening experience this time goes a little better.

The first step was doing another thorough cleaning of the unit. One of the tricky things about Aerogardens is that cleaning is a royal pain in the tuckus. Still, a good scouring pad and dishwater soap does the trick pretty well.

The next step was refilling my Aerogarden with water. I plugged it in to make sure the Airstone was still working (I'd purchased a 5 Pack of Airstones earlier, so I had four left, but happily, this one seemed to still be bubbly).

Next step was opening the box of replacement pods that Aerogrow had sent me. 

You all know the rest. Learning from my last experience, I put the pods as far apart from each other as possible, and I used some plant spacers from my old Aerogarden tomatoes to protect the empty holes from dirt and critters (you can also purchase a Plant Spacer Kit from Aerogarden).

And so we'll start attempt two, remembering the lessons of pruning, pollinating, and cleaning this time!