But they fake us out with super-duper large models for proper farmers. Units that are not decorative. For serious people who grow multiple types of things that grow at various rates.
No.
Although this looks splendid it's for somebody else. Someone who's serious about indoor farming. We are just goofing around having fun, these people are serious. These come in a couple of sizes to varying degrees of extravagance. Not appropriate for urban apartment living. These are not sensible gifts. These are too much. Way too bright. You get Baby Bear, Mama Bear and Papa Bear, the thing that we want, while here you get these, Great-Grandfather Bear.
These Aerogarden people are getting their act down.
I watched them go through phases.
At first I assumed the owner who lived in Boulder was a hippy type who was interested in hydroponics. Probably interested in growing pot chiefly but introducing his product to appeal to a broader audience. In the beginning his customer service was excellent.
Then he sold out [!]
To Scotts lawn fertilizer company. The stock was taken off the NYSE and listed as penny stocks. The new owners experimented. They expanded the marketing scheme. They expanded the line extensively. They offered tons of cute little kits for girls. Units that looked like toys with low light output and only a few seed pods. Things did not grow very well in these weaker units. Now they're all gone from their website.
All these MBA types using market statistics to narrow down what works best.
They switched the lighting from high output fluorescents to LED. They switched the fertilizer. Duh. Their customer service department is no longer quite as good. Before they would replace seed pods that failed to germinate immediately with no questions asked, now they're more inclined to tell you to use distilled water.
My two units use the old style high output fluorescent lights and I'm frankly tired of replacing those all the time. Proprietary. And they're made in China. And China just flat doesn't care about quality. They're expensive and weak. LED is a lot better.
The new owners pared down their models while at the same time expanding the line to include these super farmer types shown above. They further confound their offering by combining these much larger types with regular size models. So you can go crazy in one room and stay sane in another room. Either way, all the models put out a lot of light. Most people will not want that much light going on automatically in their homes for so many hours through the day.
This medium size model, Harvest, looks and sounds too much like a toy. It sounds like cheap plastic.
The woman drove me nuts. She talks way too much. I skipped over most of her blather. Just stop talking and get to the demonstration.
Too small. Too dainty. Too toy-like.
This is their largest model, Bounty. It comes in two types; standard and elite that is bluetooth connected. I don't want an internet connected unit. I don't want an indoor garden that I can operate using my phone. I want to keep garden and phone separate.
This Bounty elite unit on Amazon is an older style with a big honking interface on the front whereas the newer style has a sleeker interface.
This man is taking out his herb plants and replacing them with chile plants. He's realizing the roots are extensively intermingled.
And that's another thing. The company is called Aerogarden, presumably for the air space between the seed pods and the water reservoir, but honestly, all the units are hydroponic. The roots grow in the water reservoir. The company should be named Hydrogarden, not Aerogarden.
That guy's pequin type peppers and bird's-eye peppers are tiny red peppers that will burn your face off. They're the type that grow wild because they break off very easily and birds eat them, poop out their seeds and they grow all over the place. They're way big in South Africa.
I grew some in a window sill. A friend came over who is 1/2 Mexican descent. He told me that I'm saying the word wrong. It should be pee-kin, not pee-quin. He smashed one and ate it. Then regretted eating it. Then forgot to scrub his fingertips completely. Went to the bathroom. I noticed him stirring uncomfortably. He had touched himself with his fingertips and transferred the substance now his testicles were burning. I urged him to go back into the bathroom and scrub himself with cold soapy water. And I did that without laughing.
Because the same thing happened to me a few years earlier. A friend was given a plant that was loaded with upright tiny red peppers. We were picking them off and tossing them into the dirt expecting them to grow on their own. (They didn't. They lacked bird poo.) Later I went to the bathroom. Sat on a stool and conversed with a party of people. Soon I was squirming around on the stool and nothing would relive the building pain until finally I couldn't stand it any longer and shouted, "My balls are on fire!" And ran back to the bathroom to straddle the sink rinsing my balls under cold running water and hearing everyone in the kitchen laughing their asses off.
And they keep reminding me of that horrible moment and laugh all over again.
But I did not laugh at Allen when the same thing happened to him because I'm so ma-chur!
The man in the video could have trimmed the plant tops at the same time he trimmed the roots. The bonsai video guy knows that. He left the tops to struggle with insufficient roots. That was more stressful to the plant than having the tops trimmed to balance the plants. And had he been Prince Charles then he would have explained to the plant in a calm voice what he was doing and ask the plant's permission.
Old style Bounty elite with this large frontal interface on Amazon for $232.00 down from $261
New style Bounty elite with sleek appearance and interface on Aerogarden site for $224.00 down from $400.00, a savings of 44%
This is their largest model, Bounty. It comes in two types; standard and elite that is bluetooth connected. I don't want an internet connected unit. I don't want an indoor garden that I can operate using my phone. I want to keep garden and phone separate.
This Bounty elite unit on Amazon is an older style with a big honking interface on the front whereas the newer style has a sleeker interface.
This man is taking out his herb plants and replacing them with chile plants. He's realizing the roots are extensively intermingled.
And that's another thing. The company is called Aerogarden, presumably for the air space between the seed pods and the water reservoir, but honestly, all the units are hydroponic. The roots grow in the water reservoir. The company should be named Hydrogarden, not Aerogarden.
That guy's pequin type peppers and bird's-eye peppers are tiny red peppers that will burn your face off. They're the type that grow wild because they break off very easily and birds eat them, poop out their seeds and they grow all over the place. They're way big in South Africa.
I grew some in a window sill. A friend came over who is 1/2 Mexican descent. He told me that I'm saying the word wrong. It should be pee-kin, not pee-quin. He smashed one and ate it. Then regretted eating it. Then forgot to scrub his fingertips completely. Went to the bathroom. I noticed him stirring uncomfortably. He had touched himself with his fingertips and transferred the substance now his testicles were burning. I urged him to go back into the bathroom and scrub himself with cold soapy water. And I did that without laughing.
Because the same thing happened to me a few years earlier. A friend was given a plant that was loaded with upright tiny red peppers. We were picking them off and tossing them into the dirt expecting them to grow on their own. (They didn't. They lacked bird poo.) Later I went to the bathroom. Sat on a stool and conversed with a party of people. Soon I was squirming around on the stool and nothing would relive the building pain until finally I couldn't stand it any longer and shouted, "My balls are on fire!" And ran back to the bathroom to straddle the sink rinsing my balls under cold running water and hearing everyone in the kitchen laughing their asses off.
And they keep reminding me of that horrible moment and laugh all over again.
But I did not laugh at Allen when the same thing happened to him because I'm so ma-chur!
The man in the video could have trimmed the plant tops at the same time he trimmed the roots. The bonsai video guy knows that. He left the tops to struggle with insufficient roots. That was more stressful to the plant than having the tops trimmed to balance the plants. And had he been Prince Charles then he would have explained to the plant in a calm voice what he was doing and ask the plant's permission.
Old style Bounty elite with this large frontal interface on Amazon for $232.00 down from $261
New style Bounty elite with sleek appearance and interface on Aerogarden site for $224.00 down from $400.00, a savings of 44%
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