Two months with an AeroGarden
21.08.2023 - 11:48
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
It’s two months (nine weeks, actually) since our space garden landed, and Ryan and I became pseudonauts. For the first seven weeks, it grew the selection of herbs it came with – Genovese basil, dill and curly parsley. The basil was the quickest to grow, and the most vigorous. The dill was second and grew tallest. The parsley… well, at the end of seven weeks it was just about getting going.
As the plants leafed out, they drank more water. The weather was hot, and by week seven they were slurping their way through the water reservoir in three days. The dill grew too tall, and the leaves which touched the lights crisped up and died. The solution to these issues is to harvest the herbs regularly, but I haven’t got into the habit of making pesto, and we struggled to find uses for the dill (although it’s tasty in mashed potatoes!). So I started to think about replacing the herbs with new plants.
The ideal crops for the AeroGarden need either have to be quite dwarf (or enjoy regular pruning) and to have a relatively small footprint, as there’s not much horizontal space. There are other herbs we do regularly use, so the next AeroGarden run might feature those.
There’s a fairly major issue with the AeroGarden, in that it is designed to use proprietary seed pods. These are plastic capsules, filled with a long and tapered peat pellet, which has a dip in the top for seeds. Most come pre-sown. It is possible to buy a kit which has pods and empty peat pellets so that you can sow your own seeds. But there doesn’t currently seem to be a UK supplier, so you have to order each kit directly from America, with the delivery costs making them prohibitively expensive. This is before you get to the environmental issues of single-use plastic and
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