AeroGarden Smart Garden — MSRP $165.00 — “The AeroGarden Smart Garden gives you all the benefits of owning a garden without the backbreaking, on-your-knees-in-the-dirt work.”
Pros
Simplifies growing almost anything
Watering all by itself for you
Grow lights increase the growth speeds
A selection of plant varieties to choose from
Cons
Harvest model — which doesn’t work with an app
May be a bit more troublesome to clean
Are you a budding home cook who wants fresh herbs at your fingertips? Do you want quick access to basil for pesto-making or to perk up jarred marinara sauce? If so, a smart garden may be just the ticket — in particular, the AeroGarden Smart Garden.
This unit takes all the guesswork out of growing plants. I’m fairly good at gardening (in fact, I have a potato crop that should be ready to harvest in a week or so), but I could never keep herbs alive. Chives, basil, rosemary, it doesn’t matter — I will figure out how to kill them.
I’m the guy herbs are afraid to sleep under the bed.
However, with the AeroGarden I grew a really impressive amount of herbs that I used for six months. I harvested several yields from it before the plants outgrew their pots and needed to be planted directly into the ground.
What’s in the box?
The AeroGarden Smart Garden refers to three models: the Harvest, Harvest 360 and Harvest Slim. These models mainly differ in the number of plants they can support.
The AeroGarden comes mostly assembled out of the box — you fill it with water and plant feed, insert the seed pods and let it do its thing.
I use the Harvest model, which tracks up to six different plants. Everything you need to get started is in the box like the pre-planted seed pods, plant feed, and instructions.
It took just a few minutes for setup. It’s preassembled out of the box — you fill it with water and plant feed, drop in the seed pods, and let it go.
How smart is the AeroGarden?
There is an AeroGarden app, but my version wasn’t compatible. Instead, I controlled all essential functions via the onboard lights. There are three of them: green light for plant food, blue light for water, and white light to switch the LEDs on or off.
The AeroGarden operates on an internal timer. A series of LED grow lights fixed to a telescoping, adjustable stand will angle down over the plants for 15 hours a day. Once you plug the device into your outlet, that determines the time for the lights to come on, but it can be changed as needed.
I configured mine to mostly shine overnight, but be warned: these lights are bright. After all, they are meant 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 somehow.
Water is circulated around the seed pods by an inner pump. The light will flash to indicate that the water level is too low until you fill the gauge to the correct level. At the beginning of the grow cycle, I only had to top off the water about once per week. Towards the end, when my plants reached full maturity, it was almost once a day.
You have to sprinkle in two capfuls of plant food every couple of weeks. The fertilizer arrives in a small bottle that you can easily stow out of the way behind the smart garden but you can easily track.
What can you grow?
You don’t even plant your own seeds, though I suppose you could, given enough time. AeroGarden offers a variety of pre-planted seed pods. I started with Genovese basil, Thai basil, lavender, parsley, thyme and dill.
Between the flowers, herbs, and actual vegetables, there are upwards of 120 plant varieties to choose from. Before writing this, I pulled every last herb out of my garden and planted a round of summer salad greens, but cherry tomatoes, microgreens, bok choy and so much more can be planted, too.
The basil thrived almost too well, choking the thyme.
Once planted, you put a small plastic lid on top of the pod. This protects the seed inside until it germinates. The lid is taken off once the sprout is tall enough to hit it.
Various plants flourish at different paces. The dill I planted was growing faster than everything else, but the two types of basil quickly surpassed it. The truth is that they grew too well — I lost my thyme, in fact, because the roots from the basil choked it out.
The seed pods are guaranteed to germinate. In fact, even if it doesn’t germinate, you can also reach out to AeroGarden for a replacement. I had that happen only once with one of my plants, and that was because (I assume) the seed in question fell out of its pod. Everything else thrived, though the thyme didn’t make it.
Day-to-day operation
I like things you can just set and forget. Within reason, the AeroGarden is just that. It controlled the watering and fertilization of the plants. All I needed to do was some maintenance every few days. The smart garden sat on my kitchen countertop, so it was perfect for reaching over to pinch a few basil leaves off for a spaghetti sauce or to pluck out a few little lavender leaves to make a tea with.
It is not smart in the regular way. Of course, unlike the app, there was no buggering about with push notifications or growth reports on my phone or anything like that — but it was useful enough to mean that the device has held pride of place in our kitchen since I set it up just after Christmas.
Our take
The AeroGarden Smart Garden is an excellent entry point for an affordable smart garden. For a mere $165, it allows you to bring fresh vegetables, herbs or even flowers into a small space. It removes all the guesswork behind growing, even for those with the blackest of thumbs.
Do you have a better option?
These days, we’re witnessing an explosion of smart gardens. There are half dozen different options ranging from the Click and Grow Smart Garden, the Rise Garden, Edn Garden, etc. Even options like the Gardyn, which can be as large as a bookshelf, with room for up to 30 plants. There are a number of alternatives, but whether they’re “better” or not is a matter of opinion.
How long will it last?
I’ve had the AeroGarden Harvest since just after Christmas and it’s still chugging along. With proper pruning, individual plants can last a very long time, and the hardware carries a one-year limited warranty that covers manufacturing defects.
Should you buy it?
For sure, especially if you don’t have a garden of your own. As an apartment dweller, the AeroGarden provided me with fresh herbs on demand and honestly added a splash of excitement to my cooking (pun intended).