The Aerogarden has made gardening fun again!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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On Nov 22, 2008, I set up the Aerogarden, Today, I harvested my first three cherry tomatoes from the garden (two golden harvests and one red heirloom), there are still plenty of tomatoes in different stages of development, and the two red heirloom plants are now setting out their third set of buds

the three plants started off in a 3 pod garden, and were moved into a more spacious 6 pod Elite 6+ that has the extended height growing arm (2’) and higher light output (three CF bulbs)

the homebrew rig is producing a massive amount of lettuce, enough to make either one huge salad every two days, or a standard sized salad every day (I harvest two days worth of greens every two days, and by day 2 it’s ready for another harvest), and it’s been producing like this for the last 2.5 months, and shows no sign of slowing down, I’m actually getting kinda’ sick of lettuce, it’s so productive…

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NASA must be behind this…

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Mind giving more info on the homebrew rig? I’ve got two Aerogardens, one with tomatos, one with herbs, and would love to have fresh lettuce without dropping $150 + cost of seeds on another aerogrow. All my gardener friends say lettuce is butt easy, so I’m willing to try it on my own. Well, on my own, with your help. :smiley:

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I’ve been eyeing one of those things forever. But I just can’t bring myself to pay that much for it. I hear you can grow strawberries in it though…I’d kill for fresh strawberries in the winter :frowning:

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Homebrew rigs are dead easy to make…

Tools needed;
1" hole saw
small drill bit slightly larger than the air-line hose diameter
Drill

Hardware needed;
Rubbermaid/sterlite plastic tote with snap-on lid (one gallon size, same water capacity as the AeroGarden 6/7 pod models)
Aquarium air pump (I use a Whisper 60 for my lettuce homebrew)
Air-line tubing one way check valve
air-line tubing (silicone tubing stays flexible longer and is more durable)
airstone (I use a Penn-Plax flat airstone, 10" long)
Some form of lighting, I use a combination of a standard 4’ flourescent shoplite with one plant-specific tube and one full-spectrum tube, and one of my old Compact Flourescent 30" aquarium lightstrip, both lights are hooked up to a surge protector connected to a mechanical timer
Mechanical timer
Aerogrow 6-pod Master Gardener kit or a lettuce kit

Supplies needed;
seeds
some form of fertilizer, hydroponic specific ferts are best if you’re not using an AG master Gardener kit, which comes with ferts

Construction of homebrew rig;

Using the 1" hole saw, bore a series of holes in the lid of the tote, number and layout are up to you, I have eight holes in the lid of my homebrew
using the small drill bit, drill a hole in the top of the lid for the air-line tubing
feed the air-line tubing through the small hole, connect the airstone and the air pump (it might be a good idea to use a check-valve to prevent the air pump from flooding in the event of a power outage)
check the fit of the AG6 long grow baskets, they should fit flush to the surface of the hole
position your choice of lighting system

Setting up the homebrew rig;
fill the tote with water, 3/4 full, make sure at least 1/4" of the AG6 pods are submerged in the water
add ferts to the water
if you’re using a pre-seeded AG6 kit, drop the pods in and put on the domes, if you’re using the Master Gardener kit, put at least 5 seeds, but no more than 7 seeds in per pod (lettuce can take crowding just fine, you won’t need to thin the plants)
set the mechanical timer to give you 12-16 hours of light, and plug in your lighting setup

Sit back and wait, lettuce sprouts quickly in a hydroponic setup, typically you’ll see signs of life in 1-3 days, and start to have harvestable crops in 3 weeks or so

I would reccomend staggering your lettuce pods a week apart, put in 2-3 pods a week, that way when your first set of pods are winding down, your second set will be ready for harvesting, move the second set of pods to the position the first ones were in, move the third set to the second position, and re-seed the first pods and put them in the frontmost position, that way you’ll have lettuce as long as the seeds hold out and temps are compatible, leaf lettuce bolts (goes to seed) quickly in hot weather, Romaine is more heat-resistant

One other thing you might want to do, depending on how self-sufficient you want to be, is let some of your lettuce bolt once it’s reached the end of it’s useful life, let it flower, go to seed, and collect the seeds, sow those seeds for the next crop

If you have a 3 pod or 6 pod AG already, you CAN re-use the peat sponges (depending on what you grew in them previously), your herb pods can be re-used, definitely save the baskets, pull the finished plants from the peat pod, pull off the roots, and let the pod dry out, remove additional dried roots, and the pod will be ready for re-use

You could also use open-cell foam, or rockwool in the baskets, there are garden supply catalogs that also sell the AG style peat pods for use in seed-starter kits, they might need a little trim, but they should work

I always save a few seeds from my cherry tomatoes, and I will let some of my lettuce bolt to seed before I’m finished with those pods, heck, I’ll try to save seeds from whatever I grow in my hydroponic rigs, it’s a way of increasing my self-sufficiency

Now, if I could just find a source for Aerogrow compatible 24 watt 2-pin CF full-spectrum bulbs… if AeroGrow goes out of business, that’s the only weak link in the AG, that it uses a proprietary two-pin full spectrum CF bulb, most of those bulbs use a 4 pin setup, I don’t like being tied down to a single proprietary source for one of the most critical parts of the AG…

Sorry for the rambling, I had a lot of information I wanted to get out to you :wink:

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AngelSoft AeroGrow tried a strawberry kit but it didn’t work too well, so they no longer sell it, you could try starting Alpine strawberries from seed (I hear they work well) or you could try transplanting existing plants to a hydroponic rig, the problem is, plants have two different root structures depending on how they’re grown, roots designed for dirt don’t transition well to a Deep Water Culture hydroponic system (which is what the AG3/6 are, they’re DWC rigs) and vice-versa

if you’re going to try transplanting existing strawberry plants to a hydroponic rig, start with the smallest, youngest plants possible, set them in a glass of water with some rooting hormone fertilizer in it, let them stand a couple weeks until they produce water-specific roots, then plant them in the hydroponic rig

Once I get some space available in one of my hydroponic rigs, I’m going to try growing some Alpine Strawberries from seed

Oh yeah, forgot about one of my mini-hydro rigs I just set up a week or so ago, a very simple, quick and easy rig that takes about 5 minutes to build;

Hardware needed;
Glaceau 32 Oz VitaminWater bottle
small aquarium air pump (Whisper 10 in my case)
air-line tubing
standard airstone
AeroGarden 3/6 pod basket
seed support media (in my case, a recycled AG growsponge)

bore a hole in the top of the VitaminWater bottle, near but just below the neck, feed the airline hose in, put on the airstone, fill the bottle to just below the airline hose hole, add ferts, plug in air pump, seed the growpod, and put on the dome

the nice thing about the VitaminWater bottle is that the AG6 long basket fits the mouth of the bottle PERFECTLY, no need to drill, saw, or cut the bottle to fit the basket

I have this rig basking in the spill light from my AG6 Elite+, and it’s seeded with a Micro Tom cherry tomato seedling (Micro Toms grow no larger than 6-8" high at full maturity, and are determinate plants, they stay small, and produce one crop of tomatoes before expiring)

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I got one of the 7 pod AeroGardens about a two weeks ago. I have tiny little herb sprouts growing. :slight_smile:

But I also look at the spill light and think there must be someway to harness it to productive ends. I’m curious, I don’t quite understand how you are using the pump. Are you pumping water with the air pump? My tentative plan that is sneaking around my brain was going to rely on a gravity drip system. i.e. a reservior above that slowly dripped on to the sponges. But obviously that would take daily refilling, and it interferes with my fervent dedication to lazyness. An active pump would clearly be preferable.

Also, do you use the official nutrients? I keep help but thinking that there might be a cheaper solution using aqaurium plant fertilizer and plain garden fertilizer, but as I said i have only had it for two weeks, and have plenty of time before the supplied starter kit stuff runs out.

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Could you post pictures of the homemade setup? This sounds pretty cool!

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I loooooove my Aerogarden. I got a refurbished one for $80. It’s a 7 pod and I have 2 basils, mint, thyme, chives, parsley and dill. I set it up just before Xmas and I use herbs from it almost every day. The basil especially has been awesome. I make bruschetta every week, and add a variety of herbs to almost everything I cook.

The only plant I don’t care for is the chives. I have about 10 stalks and it grows extremely slowly after being cut. I think my next purchase for plants will be a custom mix (you can get it on the website) with 4 kinds of basil, cilantro, parsley and mint.

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for the VitaminWater bottle rig, i have one of my old Whisper 10 air pumps driving an airstone in the bottle, the only thing from the AG6’s it’s using is the spillover light, for ferts, I’m using Schultz liquid, available at any garden store, Home Despot, or Wally World

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Or you could pull the chives (is the grow media in your pod the gray sponge, or the brown peat pod?) and re-seed that pod with something else, heck, if you want to let the current herbs run their course, you can re-use all the grow media when you pull the finished plants, just pull the plants and their roots (and hopefully chuck them in your composter, right? :wink: ) and re-seed the pods

Or you could get the 7 pod Master Gardener kit which allows you to use your own seeds, in all honesty, the only thing you need to save from the previous garden is the plastic baskets, it’s a lot cheaper re-seeding the old pods rather than buying an expensive new kit, go to a hydroponic gardening shop and buy some liquid ferts (or get them online) and don’t bother with the AeroGrow tabs (which are available on their own anyway)

My goal for my Aerogardens is to be able to re-use them without having to keep going back to AeroGrow for supplies, I recycle my grow baskets, grow pods/sponges, and I’m researching using hydro specific liquid ferts, the only component I have to go back to AeroGrow for is the bulbs, as they use a proprietary two-pin Compact Flourescent bulb (1560 Lumens, 26 watts), and similar CF full-spectrum bulbs use a four pin design, I suppose I could replace the AG bulb sockets with the standard four pin sockets, that would allow me to buy much cheaper full spectrum CF bulbs, generally speaking, 4 pin CF bulbs are around $10 each, a two pack of AeroGrow bulbs goes for around $30 (or $15 ea. )