April 23, 2006 (Day29)

Today we havested one entire plant to see how well it will grow back. 

April 24, 2006 (Day30)

We were in a rush today and decided to harvest some more of the lettuce to use as part of a salad for a quick dinner at the office.  We'll keep a close eye on the growth for the next few days to see what will happen.

April 25, 2006 (Day31)

Apparently we have been a bit "too aggressive" in harvesting our lettuce crops...which, in hindsight, should have been obvious!  The instructions in the booklet clearly states to NOT remove more than 1/3 of the leaves from a plant at any given time!!! 

Although there are new growth in the harvested plants, it would be a while before the leaves get sufficiently large for eating.  The small leaves are also much further away from the light at this point.  We'll have to tell everyone to harvest using the new method for the remaining plants :-)

April 30, 2006 (Day36)

Some of the harvested heads have regrown their leaves...including the ones where we a bit too "aggressive" with the cutting :-)

May 17, 2006 (Day53)

This update is for our reader Tanya! We have been harvesting the leaves from all of the heads evenly...instead of just lopping them off like we did a few weeks back.  This is "kinder" to the lettuce and made the plants' growth a lot more even.

We'll have one more update to show the final root ball and the cleaning of the AeroGarden.  The rest of this crop will be harvested in another week or so.   The AeroGarden will be replanted using the herb pods.  We'll do the exact same "tracking" for the herb garden. 

Hydroponic gardening has been around for a long time.  Techniques and systems for growing plants in soil-less environments have been successfully created by amateur and professionals alike.

While the concepts and equipment necessary for a hydroponic garden is pretty simple to set up, it is often quite industrial looking and definitely not something one would want in the kitchen.

AeroGrow has created a system that is both simple and attractive. The photo below is the start of the project.

The AeorGarden was quick to assemble, easy to plant, and looks great anywhere in the house.  The photo below is the end of Week 2.

We will track the progress of the growth of the garden from planting (March 25th) to harvest.  We'll post the updates and photos every Saturday.  The photo below is the end of Week 3.

Here we are at the end of Week 4 and the crop is very vigorous.  We have been eating bits from it for a week now.

By Week 5, we have had many salads from the AeroGarden.  Production continues to be good.  We expect we can get a small salad for two every 3-4 days.

Reviews:

1. Assembly

2. Planting

3. Updates

         Week 1: March 25 - March 31

         Week 2: April 1 - April 7

         Week 3: April 8 - April 16

4. Cleanup

Assembly Summary:

1. Difficulty - easy

2. Time - 10 minutes

3. Tools - none

Planting Summary:

1. Difficulty - easy

2. Time - 5 minutes

3. Tools - none

Maintenance Summary:

1. Difficulty - easy

2. Time - 1 minutes

3. Tools - none

Cleanup Summary:

1. Difficulty - easy

2. Time - 10 minutes

3. Tools - none