Aerogarden

I just now bought 2 sets of 3 compact fluorescent lights made to fit my two Aerogarden units. I intend to start up one of the units and leave the other idle for now. I also put together an herb combination for its 7 compartments. I'm better at planning now that I know how they grow. The thing that amazed me is at checkout the buyer is offered several shipping options, I recall the list a bit unusual: regular shipping, two day shipping, overnight, and economy, I think 5 to 10 days. The machines have been sitting there unused, I'm in no hurry, so I opted for slowest of all. The box arrived within two days.

Aerogarden is having a holiday sale. Their mailer said 20% off all orders. The offer  is repeated throughout the sales booklet. I usually throw those things away, but this time I read it to catch up with developments. Also, free shipping for orders over $50.00. That is why I bought 2 sets of lights (6 fluorescents) where one set is needed immediately. Mine still light up well enough for photography but they are not strong enough for plants to grow best. Their online checkout system did not calculate the discount. I wrote them, "Apply the discount or don't apply the discount, but for goodness sake make it clear which items qualify."

It occurred to me after I emailed all those discounts might apply only to their hydroponic units, not to replacement lights nor to their seed kits. Oops.

They emailed back immediately and applied the discount, and I'm not even sure they were supposed to. That is my experience with their customer service. They bend over backwards to please cranky customers. Like me.

Previously I complained about a seed pod not germinating. They replaced it.I complained about one of the three light fixtures failing. They replaced the whole top. So far, their customer service has been 100% responsive and beyond to any complaint I come up with. It makes me feel a bit of a jerk for being so difficult to please and so complainy.

I bought stock in this company a long time ago because I thought the whole idea was fun. I researched first. I studied the highs and lows of its stock price and saw that it followed a regular pattern along with two central holidays. The pattern ran reliably from around $4.00 a share to upwards of $9.00 a share. I could have fun buying and selling twice a year, reliably doubling each time. So I popped for it. A lot, actually.

The company president lives in Boulder and by my reading seemed to me something of a hippy type. I imagined him wrapped up in his idea as I would be and brought the whole thing to fruition, a labor of real love. I imaged him sticking with his commercial project through his hippy old age. I presumed far too much. Immediately after I bought stock he sold the company. The new majority owners and new management sold off a huge chunk of common stock to raise capital in order to make significant changes. The company operated in the red for quite some time and now that my stock is diluted its price took a nosedive, like this:

They no longer even qualified for NYSE. Junk stock. Penny stock. I lost interest in following. I have no idea what it is worth, nor if they are back on the exchange. I decided to keep the stock anyway, to not just bite it and take the loss, rather, hang on and see what happens. After all, I liked the idea at the beginning and I still do, more than the company president does or did, apparently. He turned out to be pure businessman, built his company then cashed in and took off, not to be heard of again.

The new management hooked up with Scotts Miracle-Gro fertilizer. Another company I like. That combination opened new possibilities for outlets of retail sales. They developed new marketing means. And most importantly they developed new lines of product. Some of their new units at the time were cute as bugs. Made in the shape of bugs. Ladybird bugs. All those smaller units are all cute as can be, soccer balls, flying saucers, cow pattern, what have you. They might have dropped some of those and kept only the best sellers.

Now the super jazzed up top of the line fluorescent type that I own are the old style, almost obsolete. Their new line uses LED lights. Their tippy-top of the line costs less than mine did back then. Plus the lights needn't be replaced, a significant savings over time. The whole setup is much better than before. Fluorescents wear out, although still very bright, their brightness diminishes somewhat so for best results they should be replaced. But I do not do that. I limp along with weakened light and the units work okay, just not as good as they could. The lights are proprietary, they do not fit anything else, and that bums me out. Apart from the two Aerogardens, I have two cheap 40W fluorescents in shop fixtures aimed at a poinsettia in regular potting soil that is doing better than it would in a window with strong but mostly indirect winter light. I considered using those instead.

I must say, the new management team is doing everything right. They introduced a whole line of cute small girlish units suitable for children, and made their super units even more super duper while keeping prices suppressed. This encourages repeat sales of their seed kits. They extended their seed kits to include more herbs, more vegetable choices, and more flowers. They broadened their line of accessories from simple items like vinaigrette cruets and plant clippers, to more significantly useful supplemental water containers, bulk liquid fertilizer, growing media, various growing bowls for specific plants such as strawberries, additional baskets for growing your own seeds, starter seed trays and the like. They changed the electronics to be more reliable. They held down the cost of everything. I'm tempted to buy two more of their most powerful LED units but I am loath to part with what I have. 

My Aerogarden 7 was nearly $300.00, I think. I own two, and I bought a few more for gifts and had them delivered to different states. I forget how many. Nobody mentions them. They're probably wasted. Now they cost $160.00 And now they added one even stronger than this shown below that they call "ultra."

Their newest LED models range from quite inexpensive (and probably rather weak but I don't know) to LED Miracle-Gro Aerogarden ultra, regular cost $300, on sale now $290. 

That is not 20% off. I think if you called you'd get even more off everything, seed kits as well. Liquid fertilizer comes with the seed kits.

The pole holding the lights extends quite high, triple the height shown, telescoping upward as plants grow to accommodate the type plant that you select. Tomatoes take a lot of height, more so than, say, lettuce varieties. It was actually quite fun growing lettuce in the dead of winter and having it available all season. Herbs too. I had herbs in one room and lettuce in another. The lights and the pump are automatic, set to the type seed kit you've got going. And, man, do they go on, bink, the whole place is flooded with light. I like that a lot. I like having bright light in winter. Plus it helps with photography. 

7 Petunias

Those were 2/24 planted five days earlier, so that's what? 30 for month to month, +6 to end the March, +2 to start April so 38 days since then ↓ and 43 days since planting and it is ready to burst its first bud. The bud stem is right there in the front.

Now these are special seeds. Special magical seeds. The company, Aerogarden, has the lockdown on these magical seeds. It's like Jack and the Beanstalk, the seeds are proprietary and scientific and magic so there is no way they can be duplicated outside the Aerogarden seed vault lockdown. 

Right? 

No. They found the seeds that work best. And these petunia seeds are particularly brilliant, they really have come a long way developing these annual plants. They pile, they creep, they cascade, they needn't be pinched, they keep going and going and going. So now when you buy these most modern of all hybrid seeds they cost a lot. Sometimes a dollar a dot. And by dot, I mean dot, like this:  [.]

That is a petunia seed. 

Each dot cost a dollar.

But it is pretty much guaranteed to grow and guaranteed to blow your mind, flower-wise.

This pushed the hybrids before them to the background and they are not so bad. Excellent, actually, they just do not go crazy like the new ones do. They are the beautiful and abundant standard bearers of previous years and their seeds are cheep as dirt. It's a shame to not just buy a pound and sprinkle the seeds all around town. 

I placed an order for three vials of mind-blowing petunia seeds, 1 larger vial of regular outstanding white petunias to fill in here and there and everywhere, and another plant called Vinca which Aerogarden is marketing as their new hot thing. 

Complaints to Aerogarden about their Vinca seed kits involve problems with germination. When the plant takes off it fills out so completely that one or two failures is not noticed. It is not a problem from a true gardener's point of view. It saves clearing out things that die due to being overly compacted. In a 7-plant kit the task of keeping up can be daunting with 7 hungry plants slurping water, needing feedings, and cleaning out excess overcrowding growth, a regular Audrey 2. 

From the consumer's point of view they bought a kit consisting of 7 seeds with 7 little cups and 7 little domes and they expect 7 little plants to arise from it. They are dividing the total seed kit cost by 7 and calculating cost for each plant and knowing themselves ripped off when one or two or three do not take.  Insisting they be satisfied with a successful pile of plants does not cut it. They need every one to work, even if the whole effort works out worse in the end because of it. 

So I bought some of these Vinca seeds too. From Pase seeds. I placed the order some time this weekend, the seeds were in the mailbox today. 

And their petunia seeds are $6.75 for ten, I lied about them being a dollar a dot for dramatic exaggeration. 

I hardened baby plants on the balcony overnight it became too cold and they suffered. Brought them in over the threshold but kept the door open and weather and sun on them and they all sprang back.

petunias

These three lights were not replaced as instructed so this is running underpowered. They are proprietary lights, more expensive than need be, that bums me out and causes me to resist their wily marketing ways, plus they sure are bright. These three are actually quite old. I've been using the whole setup without plants as photography lamp for a year. That right there is bad and yet the thing is going satisfactorily if not going full blazes. 

Other plants from seeds are doing well by the 40W fluorescence I bought on the fly through eBay. I have fifty of them. They bummed me out too, at first, because they start out not so bright, you can watch the bulb brighten as it warms up but not in a spiral as you expect because the spiral is two tubes, the in and the out twisted together, so it weirdly fills in with light. Blinding light. The baby plants love it. Grow right up to it to touch it. And fast too. Tomatoes, and chiles, different types. And oranges from navel oranges that oddly grew seeds this year. I planted them and they are growing.