A little miffed at AeroGrow, but all is forgiven: Day 67

So, it's been a while since I posted my latest update, and that's mainly because I've been a little miffed at AeroGrow customer service. Although I have to admit in retrospect the story is amusing, and AeroGrow did make good, so I thought I'd share with you.

So, I never got a response to my first email, so I sent another one. With this one I got a response back pretty quickly. It was obviously copied and pasted from some master list they have somewhere, but the advice was pretty good.

About the basil dying at the stem:

You are describing “damping off” in your basil. This  is a fungal infection that attacks plants at the junction between stem and roots and kills off the cells that form the transport system that carries nutrients up the stem.  It will appear to be a brown ring, and then you will observe weakness, and ultimately the plant will die because no nutrition is flowing up to the leaf canopy and the plant cannot photosynthesize.

 The solution for damping off would be to apply an organic fungicide, which you could purchase at your local garden retailer.  We use “Serenade” in the lab.  If you push the stem downwards, which pushes the peat sponge downward, and airspace is formed between the top of the root mass and the label.  This seems to help with controlling mold and fungal growths.

About the white fuzz growing inside the Aerogarden seed pod:

Mold is not generally fatal to a germinating seed.  The mold spores build a colony of fibers on the sponge itself, and do not adhere to the seed. We have observed many small little green sprouts growing right up through a mold colony.    It can be unsightly and you should try to remove it.  Here is the entry from our customer service website regarding mold:http://www.aerogarden.com/aerogarden-customer-service-support/PLANT_PROBLEMS/lthereiswhitefuzzgrowingonmygrowspongesorplants.html

If you observe mold on the cover of the pod after the seed has germinated:

·         There needs to be at least ½” of air space between the top of the peat and the bottom of the label.  Use a toothpick or pencil and push the peat down a little bit.

·         use a Q-tip  and swirl it around to remove the fibers

If you observe mold down in the peat prior to germination:
·         There needs to be at least ½” of air space between the top of the peat and the bottom of the label.  Use a toothpick or pencil and push the peat down a little bit.

·         Remove dome to allow air circulation

Both pretty good answers which I was satisfied with.

I went on to ask about the Seed Pod Guarantee, to which the customer service person responded that she wouldn't replace the basils or the cilantro because they were past 3 weeks old, and evidently their guarantee officially states that they'll only replace a seed pod if it never germinates, NOT if it grows and then dies. In all honesty, in the past they've replaced seed pods for me no questions asked, so I'm not sure if this is a new rule or that they've just started enforcing it.

I wrote back to saying I understood the policy, but since the plants died so soon after planting that I never even got a chance to harvest them, if she could extend me the courtesy of sending me the four seed pods, even though technically I was only "entitled" to one of them. I sent her the link to the pictures on the blog to show her "proof" that I never got to harvest the herbs. I also slipped in a good-natured line (complete with smiley face) that I'd be happy to put in a good word for them if they could do this for me.

A few minutes later I saw this message in my Inbox:

Summary of the following:
He planted in Nov.
He is thinly veiling a threat to blog if he doesn’t get his way
Most of his issues are growth not germination

Do we knuckle under and give him what he wants, or hold the no replacements for growth issues line?

It took me a little while to realize that I'd accidentally been copied on an internal email. Now as someone who's done this in the past, I definitely understand the horror that must have been going through this person's mind after she pressed the "send" button.

But admittedly, I was a bit taken aback. This blog gets hundreds of readers a day, so over the years I've given AeroGrow tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, of free publicity. I know that companies like AeroGrow routinely give out a lot of free stuff to bloggers to get them to write about their stuff, but from day one I've never asked them for anything.

In this case, I wasn't even asking the question as a blogger--it was as a very loyal customer who has purchased five Aerogarden units and who knows how many grow lights, seed kits, replacement motors, replacement arms, not to mention things like cutting boards and Herb N Serve bottles and cookbooks and a whole bunch of other stuff over the years. I didn't think asking for a few pennies worth of replacement seed pods was all that unreasonable.

To her credit, she emailed me as soon as she realized what she'd done, with an apology, and offered to send me a full seed kit as an apology. I responded to her that I'd be perfectly fine if she sent the four seed pods I'd originally asked for. I did slip in a little note just reminding her to not be so cynical in the future, and that sometimes extending little courtesies to their most loyal customers and advocates can go a long way.

In any case, a couple of you were asking me about the replacement pods, so I figured I'd give you the whole story. I'll be popping in the parsley soon, so hopefully I'll be able to harvest that soon. The sage and thyme are both looking great, so in a few days, I may be writing about this!

Root rot in the Aerogarden? Day 56

It's Day 56 of the Aerogarden Ultra, and suddenly things aren't looking great.

My basil plants, after starting out so well, aren't doing too well. now. One completely died and the other is turning yellow, all seemingly in a matter of days. I did an autopsy on the seed pod to try to figure out why. Here's what I saw:

It looks like a classic case of root rot, which is weird because I've never experienced this with other Aerogarden plants before. 

After doing a little diagnosis on the Web, it has the classic symptoms of Fusarium wilt, although for the life of me I have no idea how the fungus could have gotten into the Aerogarden. The only explanation I can think of is that somehow the seed pods had it to begin with. 

The thyme and oregano don't seem to be affected, but of course the parsley never got started, the cilantro is struggling, one basil is dead, and the other basil looks like its stem near its roots is deteriorating fast, resulting in yellowish leaves. 

Doesn't look like there's much life left on this one. The cilantro looks similar--the leaves are starting to wilt and the stalk at the base is getting thin. 

It may be time for me to write to Aerogrow and ask for replacement seed pods. Not sure how they'll react when I say I need two new basils, a parsley, and a cilantro. I'll also ask them for advice on how to prevent this in the future, and whether they'd suggest I completely sanitize and restart the garden.

Here's todays' tip, complete with a sprig of thyme in the picture: 

"As your plants grow, you may see some dead or brown leaves. This is perfectly normal. Just remove with your shears".

In the meantime, the tomatoes are still going strong, although to this day I still see the occasional white flies circling around. I guess they've laid their eggs on certain leaves and are hanging on as long as they can. I'm still trying to spot the eggs and remove the leaves as much as I can.

Using the Aerogarden in cooking: Day 52

We're at a point now where we're ready to use the Aerogarden herbs for cooking. Here's where we made some fried rice, harvesting some of the cilantro to add some flavor.

Lisa also tried cooking pork tenderloin for the first time, using Martha Stewart's recipe for sage and garlic crusted pork tenderloin.

Boy, this turned out great.

The tip of the day from the Aerogarden was as follows:

"For best appearance, turn grow pod so fullest growth faces OUT and the thinner side IN towards the garden's center".

This is something I've never really tried before, but it makes perfect sense--you want the thin side to receive more light and the side with more growth to maybe slow down a little.

Whitefly culprit found--the poinsettia did it! Day 48

We're approaching day 48 of the Aerogarden Ultra garden. By the way, it's you're reading this on Feburary 16-18, 2013, Aerogarden has one of their best sales yet--use coupon code BOGO to get buy-one-get-one-free on everything in the store, whether you need new seed kits, new grow lights, or even a new Aerogarden Ultra (I tried it, and if you put two Aerogarden Ultras in your cart, you can get $125 off, effectively getting each for less than $190.

The whitefly problem continued unabated, to the point where I thought I was losing the battle. It was bizarre, because I would vacuum all the white flies off all the leaves, pick the leaves off that I saw eggs on, wipe off the leaves, shake the leaves to be sure I caught any stragglers and either vacuum them or watch them fly right into the whitefly traps.

But the next day, I would come back and see them again. It's the middle of winter, so even with the windows open, I don't see any flying through there.

Then, one day I was sitting in the living room and glanced at a poinsettia plant we'd gotten around Christmas (around the time the whitefly problem started). I noticed that a lot of the leaves were losing their color. Then, I finally put two and two together and flipped one of the leaves over. Sure enough, this is where the whiteflies were calling home base. There were lots of flies and lots of eggs. It was a shame, because this poinsettia plant was a beautiful, huge plant.

I checked the other houseplants and luckily it doesn't look like the whiteflies had a taste for them. They stayed away from the succulents, the bamboo, and even my geranium and orchids, I'm guessing because the leaves were hard on their teeth (or suckers, or whatever). They seemed to go for plants with thin leaves like the poinsettia (and sage).

It was difficult, but I ended up tossing the whole poinsettia plant and putting a fresh whitefly trap near where it was. Happily, that trap is clean, and I'm not noticing any new whiteflies on the Aerogarden. Crisis solved...at least until spring comes in a few weeks!

Lisa is starting to pick off fresh herbs from the Aerogarden and toss them into her cooking. Here's some grilled squid she made, with some thyme and sage from the garden.

 

The Aerogarden Ultra popped up another tip recently:

"After your harvest, lower the Lamp Hood to keep the lights 1 to 2 inches above the plants."

I actually had never done this before, but after following this advice, I noticed that my herb plants, which had started out strong but were looking a little weak after enduring the whitefly invasion (not so much damage from the whiteflies but from me vigorously shaking them every day), were now perking up again. 

In the meantime, the tomato plants are still looking strong. In fact, the first three flowers have appeared. I checked the water, and it turns out the basin was bone dry--I need to remind myself that these tomatoes are drinking up water at a huge pace now. 

The Battle of the White Flies: Day 41

Day 41 has come and gone. At least I think it's day 41. There have been a couple more power outages, but at least this time the system kept track of the right date and time. 

Here's today's tip:

"For the best flavor, harvest herbs just before using. Any time you prune, you can use them in salads, soups, on frozen pizza, etc."

The herbs are about the same as last time. The cilantro continues to hang on but it's struggling. We used a bunch of the basil.

As you can see from the two whitefly traps, the whiteflies are still a problem. I thought I had cleared them all away, but when we tried to pick some basil after about two days of not checking, a whole bunch of flies flew out at us.

Persistence is the key to battling whiteflies. I'm not using any chemicals, I'm just using a Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner, shaking the plants, and picking them off as they fly out. A lot of times the yellow sticky traps will do the job for me, as the flies have a tendency to fly full-speed right into them.

I noticed, though, that the flies are getting more resistant. Some flies will fly into the traps but wiggle their way off. Other flies will cling onto the leaves no matter how much I shake them.

I notice they really like the sage and the basil. I've been trying to pick off leaves that I notice a lot of flies on, especially ones where I see the telltale signs of whitefly eggs (they look like translucent scales on the underside of the leaves). So far, the battle seems to be a draw--I manage to clear them away, but if I don't stay on top of them they'll come back with a vengeance. Also, I notice the basil that started so strongly is beginning to struggle; I'm wondering how affected it has been from the flies sucking at its juices.

In the meantime, the tomatoes in the Aerogarden above are still doing pretty well. Happily, the whiteflies don't seem to care for the taste of tomato leaves.

Information wiped out on the AeroGarden Ultra, but saved by the Custom Setting menu - Day 33

Well, my worst fears happened. I woke up a few days ago to find this error screen that the Aerogarden had lost power again.

Like last time, I selected "My Power Went Out". Once again, I got this message that the AeroGarden holds all of my critical settings during a power outage, and for me to check that the time is accurate.

The clock wasn't right, so I went through the process of setting the clock. Then, I was flabbergasted to see that my garden had been reset to 0 days.

Ironically, if the power was out, it hadn't been out for very long, and yet the AeroGarden totally lost track of the number of days I'd planted it. Even the old AeroGarden with its built-in battery would keep basic settings, but all my settings seem to have been completely wiped out from the Ultra. Not cool.

I was about to start writing an angry blog post when I noticed that there is a home menu on the AeroGarden Ultra. It has interesting options. Among other things, you can select "Quick Plant" (to start a brand new garden), "Set Lights" (to set the on and off times for your lights), "Set Clock" (to set the system time),

"Help and Tips" was interesting--it lets you read ahead and see all the tips the Ultra serves up for all kinds of gardens--tomatoes and peppers, flowers, the seed starter kit, and herbs.

"Set Audio Alerts" lets you set alarms, a feature I haven't tried yet. "Garden Status" shows you lots of vital statistics about your garden. "Order Supplies" is kind of a silly feature where you don't actually order the supplies on the unit, but you'll get a QR code you can scan to bring you to the page on Aerogarden.com to order.

The menu option that caught my eye was "Custom Settings".

You see a description of what this option is:

 

"Your AeroGarden lets you fully customize your pump, lights, nutrient cycles, and more"

The next thing you see is a scary warning message saying that only "Advanced Grower" should use it. 

 "Customizing these settings should only by (sic) done by Advanced Growers and is not needed in normal operations"

After all these years of using Aerogardens, I think I qualify...

More scary messages: "AeroGardens are factory set for optimal growth. Customizing these settings may void seed kit guarantees".

At this point I want to shake my AeroGarden and say "enough with the warnings! If you'd just remembered my settings like you were supposed to, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

At long last I got the the Custom Settings menu. Looks like you can customize all kinds of things, from the light cycle, to the nutrient cycle, to the pump cycle. The one I needed was "Days Planted".

Again with the disclaimer.

Finally, I got to the point where I could customize the days planted.

Luckily, I've been taking copious pictures of my screens for this blog, so I knew exactly what I had to set it to.

Happily, after this point the unit was back to normal. On the one hand, I wasn't happy that the AeroGarden Ultra that was supposed to maintain my data during a power outage lost it so quickly. On the other hand, I do like how easy it is to set it to the right number of days so I didn't have to miss a beat. 

If you're wondering what the garden looks like, here it is today:

Everything except the parsley and cilantro are growing really well. The one odd thing is that none of the herbs seem to be growing very strong at their base, so they grow tall and then flop down from their own weight. I'm not sure why this is happening when it didn't happen to my previous Aerogardens. Still, hopefully in time they'll get stronger. 

Two plants that are definitely very strong are the tomato plants. Remember the big chunk I cut off last time. Look at how the base of the plants in this case are incredibly thick and strong, and new growth is quickly coming out of the strong foundations. If you're skittish about over-pruning your tomato plants, don't be...they're resilient and will make up for however much you lop off the top in no time. I'm definitely happy with the way these are coming out. 

No go on the parsley, struggling cilantro, and overachieving tomatoes: Day 26

A lot has happened since the last post, some of it good, some of it not-so-good.

There have been a couple "tips" from the AeroGarden Ultra. Some of them have been helpful, others not-so-helpful.

Here was the tip around Day 19:

"Don't thin seedlings! Let as many sprouts per pod grow as you can. This will lead to bigger harvests down the road"

This one was interesting. I'd always thought that you wanted to thin seedlings to 1-2 per pod so that plants wouldn't crowd each other out. But here, my Aerogarden is telling me to just let them all grow. I have found that no matter how many seeds start out in the pod, only 1-3 end up growing anyway in most cases, so maybe the plants naturally thin themselves out over time.

I saw another tip pop up shortly after on Day 23:

"Prune fast growing plants like basil so slow, low growers get enough light. Trim basil above a left joint when its 3-4 in. tall."

This was a pretty good tip. My basil was growing ridiculously fast, and I could totally see it making me have to riase the lights prematurely and/or block out light from the other plants. I snipped the basil and used the leaves to spice up some pasta that I happened to be cooking for lunch--my first meal hopefully of many.

The next tip on Day 24 said this:

"Try not to raise lights until slow and low growers are well established. Prune fast growers often and enjoy your first small harvest".

Okay, at this point the Aerogarden is starting to get a little repetitive. And here was the tip on Day 26:

"For instructional pruning videos and articles, search on Pruning at AeroGarden.com/Help 1-800-476-9669

I get the feeling at this point that someone at AeroGrow really, really wants me to learn about pruning but can't fit it into the character limit of that little AeroGarden Ultra window.

In other news, the Whitefly Traps worked AMAZINGLY well. Not sure how well you can see it in this photo, but you can see that there are bunch of those little critters who met their demise by flying into that big yellow light. Since I put the paper up I haven't seen one whitefly on the leaves, but every day I see more on the paper (the squeamish among you might want to not click to zoom in).

Actually, even when zooming in it's hard to see, but looking at it in person I see a white fly graveyard with about 10-20 white flies.

Now for the not-so-good news. The parsley has gone well past its 21 day limit. Here's what the seed pod looked like when I finally lifted the plastic dome off.

It looks like the seeds never quite got started, or they grew a tiny bit but then grey moldy. 

Also, if you look carefully at the cilantro, you'll notice that it's struggling to stay alive as well. It started out well enough, but the roots are yellowing and the base is weakening.

Notice that the sage, too, is struggling to stay alive. Again, it started well enough but the steam just seems to be buckling due to the larger leaves on top. 

The oregano and thyme are growing very slowly, but seem to be doing okay so far. The basil, of course, is thriving.

I'll give it a couple more days and then will be reaching out to Aerogarden to ask for replacements for at least the cilantro and the parsley. We'll see about the sage and the others.

In other news, the tomato plants continue to grow well.

I'm actually curious as to what "tips" the Aerogarden Ultra would have given me had I grown in in that, but in lieu of having that, and against all my better instincts, I decided to follow the Aerogarden's manuals and trim the tall leaves above 4-5 branches.

I've been timid in the past about pruning too much of the Aerogarden tomatoes, which resulted in top-heavy plants. In this case, we'll see if pruning early results in super-strong roots and base stems.