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

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.

This works as advertised and the lush herbs are taking over the kitchen. It's really nice to have greenery on your countertop in the depths of winter and the taste (and smell) of fresh herbs is great. If we had more countertop space we'd go for a larger unit, but for what we have this is wonderful.Everything grew from the starter pack except the thyme (which failed for several reviewers), but I'm not going to dock a star from the review for Mother Nature being obstinate. Setup is easy and there's nothing to do but watch things grow and add water every now and then. You don't need a green thumb! I couldn't even grow a Chia Pet but this won't let me screw up. The guide helps us know how to trim each type of herb so it keeps growing.The dill grows much faster than the other herbs and steals the light so you may want to wait a couple of weeks after starting the others before adding the dill. We didn't know that so we just started putting dill on everything, and darned if it all didn't taste great.

Purchased the Harvest model with the gourmet pods in October. It was easy to set up and start the pods. After a few days the herbs sprouted and are now 3 to 6 inches tall. One pod never sprouted and I called the AeroGarden support number. The support message said they no longer provided support over the phone, but I should try to use the email form. I did that and 8 days later a replacement pod was received. I started it today.Since the purchase I have emptied the water as directed and replaced it with fresh water and plant food. No problems encountered. I reset the light timer which was also easy to do. Keep in mind that the light is on for 15 hours. (Sort of nice to see the lighted plants now that Upstate NY gets dark around 5pm.)One thing that puzzled me was the Amazon pricing says the list price is $165 and the Amazon sale price was $72. When you go to the actual AeroGarden website the Harvest model is on sale for ten dollars below their list price of $89.95. Not sure why the large difference in list pricing.Regardless of the pricing difference, I am very satisfied with the Harvest model. The company's response to the pod that didn't sprout was great. I'm glad AeroGarden resolved the problem I experienced and I will be making additional purchases from them in the future.

Updated after 4 weeks...7 days today already. It does work as described and honestly it is very easy. I did read the instructions but is pretty clear without it. I ordered the salad kit (I was not paying attention) and after 3 days I was already seeing some very little leaves. It does grow crazy fast. One of my pot did not germinate and I am not sure why not.Even though there is a pump you cannot hear it, it is extremely quiet. The LED light is super bright and it is on for 15 hours straight so you need to place it far away from a TV room or place where the light will bother you because in Winter, you light will be on sometime when the sun is gone.Updated 4 weeks... added pictures of my salade...