One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was an AeroGarden. It’s basically a small hydroponics set up for growing plants indoors. There is a special light and a pump that pushes water and nutrients into the mini-planters. Right now I have lettuce planted. Sprouts showed up in about 2 days or so. They should be harvistable in about 3 weeks and last for another three months or so. I’m getting a kick out of watching them grow so far. I hope it works out.
One of the other things they offer is a special try for starting seedlings for outdoors. I am thinking that I would like to try that as well. It holds 70 plants and that would be plenty for me. I could start all the tomatoes, cucumbers and pepper plants I want. I might also try some corn and sunflowers as well. I’ve tried starting plants inside before but for some reason it never seems to work out. Perhaps with this system it will.
The other thing I am thinking about is getting a second device to keep in my office. I would grow something different there. Perhaps flowers. So far plant I have tried in my office has died. But honestly I think that has been a combination of not getting watered enough and not enough light. I travel a good bit and I need a good healthy light on a timer as well as a system that can go without me adding water every day. This should do that.
And it is a gadget too! What more could a geek want but a gadget that grows things.
I’ve always liked growing things, although the plants die 95% of the time. I’ve still got some apple “trees” growing, planted a few months ago and growing indoors. They’re 4-6″ tall… I think I have a long way to go before they’re producing fruit.
I’m not a big vegetable guy, but there’s a place in Merrimack that grows a lot of corn. Corn that’s been picked off the stalk 20 minutes ago doesn’t even compare to store-bought stuff.
Watch out for strawberries. We planted a few and now have more plants than we know what to do with.