AeroGarden Harvest Indoor Garden Hydroponic System with LED Grow Light and Herb Kit, Holds up to 6 Pods, Black

When I want to try something new, I tend to dive right in. I wanted to try everything at once (not just herbs), but my space is quite limited. Thus, I purchased four of the Harvest units and several sets of seed kits. One month in and I am loving them so much I had to write a review.Before I get into what I planted, here's a few things to consider. The grow lights are on for 15 hour increments. You can adjust the time they turn on by pressing and holding the light indicator at the time you want it to turn on each day. You can also turn them on or off manually by tapping the indicator light. The lights snap to five different heights. In my picture, the first two are at the lowest level, third at the middle level and the last I raised to the highest for the picture, but lowered it back down to the middle height. One last thing about the grow lights. My eyes are quite sensitive to bright lights, be it sun light, headlights or phone screens, but the grow lights on these don't bother my eyes dispite being very bright.As for the indicator light for lights, it is always on and quite bright. I have these set up in my bedroom of all places, so to solve that issue, I've covered the indicator lights with a strip of red Tail Light Tape.The watering cycle turns on every 25 minutes, 24/7 and runs for 5 minutes. I already sleep with ear plugs, so not a problem for me. I have noticed the dripping gets louder if you let the water get low, so be sure to keep it topped off as they recommend.Now for what I planted (left to right in the picture). I have the herbs that come with it in the first unit. I did have a dud thyme which I swapped out after 20 days. (It grew fuzz instead.) The new one showed leaves in 3 days. Woohoo! It is still small, I still have the Grow Dome on it. From the Q&A section, I see you can contact Aerogarden for a replacement, but as I received a set of herb pods with each Harvest I bought, I didn't need to that.To allow the slow growers to get there share of light, I've already pruned/harvested dill four times, basil two time and Thai basil once. Speaking of Thai basil, I never tried this herb before, but found a delightful idea online for three cup chicken which I made last night. My roommate even told me I have to make that again for her. Not a problem as I will have a constant supply of that herb soon enough. The regular basil has turned into little appetizers with mozzarella balls and tomatoes. Can't wait to make these with home grown tomatoes as it is still store-bought in the picture.My second unit is filled with six Salad Greens Mix pods. Already harvested five bowls of salad for myself, and I've stopped ordering lettuce from the store. I harvest by picking off the largest leaves. My goal is to keep it below the lights at the lowest setting, but hard to keep up with these fast growing leaves. Looks like I'll be sharing it with my neighbors before long. They already took some of the dill off my hands.The third and fourth units have tomato and bell pepper plants. I used two of the Red Heirloom Cherry Tomato pods. They are the larger, faster growing tomato plants. I already trimmed some of the branches that were reaching too far out. I can see a few flower buds starting to form, so I have my Be the Bee Pollinator prepped with batteries and ready to go once they open.I used the Grow Anything Pods using a few seeds from a yellow bell pepper and an overripe grape tomato. Both sprouted nicely. The grape tomato seedlings turned yellow for a bit, but finally started to grow nicely. As for the bell pepper, I will need to wait and see if I can keep a plant at a manageable size in a Harvest unit.If you managed to read though my mini novel, you get one last word of caution. The fertilizer is on the pricy side. I accidentally bought one 3oz bottle for almost $20 on Amazon. Looks like the price has dropped now, but I found it much cheaper to purchase directly from the aerogarden website, caveat being you can manage meet the minimum amount for free shipping. They frequently have sales and you can checkout using Amazon Pay. At the speed I go through it with four units, I thought it better to purchase the 1 liter bottle size.Happy growing!!

Got this for my wife at Christmas. She absolutely loves it. We have grown a lot of fresh veggies in there including spices and lettuce.

Like mine so much I got another for my cousin who loves to cook w fresh herbs.

Like that it works well, dislike that is no way to replace the lights if they burn out.

I've seen ads for these things for years and thought they had to be the biggest white elephant known to man - some vaguely more sophisticated cousin of the Chia Pet. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!This thing is great. It does everything it says and more, is easy to use, and will give me fresh greens all winter.I'm looking forward to having bright fresh greens while blizzards rage outside - and this gives more than enough for one person - I have trouble keeping up with a few things. It's given me more beautiful dill than I can use, by a mile (the photo is less than half the dill that I finally had to hack back because it was crowding other things).Best part is that this is almost zero work. Top off the water every now and then (up to every day or two as the plants get bigger) and add two capfuls of plant food every two weeks when the light goes on. Could. Not. Be. Easier.I learned a few things from my first round, so here are some helps and hints:- I started with only four items, planning on planting the other two after 2-3 weeks so my harvests would be staggered. Mistake. This stuff grows so fast that the greenery from my first round blocked the light from getting to the later plantings. I spent a few weeks trying to pull back the higher stuff to create a path for the light to the newer stuff but finally gave up. Learned for next time, though.- Ditto with not putting things that take a few weeks to sprout (the plant cone has est sprout time written on the top) next to things that sprout in days or the later items may struggle to get light. Next time I'll arrange plants so that things with similar sprout times are somewhat together.- This one's no joke. Plant things that you will use a lot. Things like basil, parsley and chives can go on almost everything, but uses for something like dill are more limited. Next round I will favor things that are versatile and have wide use, because this grows A LOT of everything.- And final comment on balance, next time I will plant maybe four salad greens and two herbs. You use the greens in more volume, so they will balance out with the herbs if you plant more. So 4-2 or maybe 3-3- The light is really, really bright. Pick a place where it's easy to walk to from the kitchen with a bowl and scissors, but not in your face where it could get irritating. If you cycle it on during the day, it won't be so intrusive. This thing throws zero heat, so you can block the light easily if needed with stacked items or even a paper bag over top.- The bigger your plants get, the more they suck up the water. At first I only had to top off the water once a week or so. Now I'm adding about a pop bottle of water every few days. I worry about what happens when travel resumes because I can see it running out quickly when I'm not here. There is a model of AeroGarden with a vacation mode that adjust lights so the plants grow less and need less water while you're away, and if I get a second AG, it will have the vacation mode.That's it! This thing really works and is a lot of fun. For a single-person household, it almost works too good because there's a lot of greens to eat! I will solve that by using better balance and targeted selection of plants for the next round.