Unboxing the AeroGarden Harvest - The Seed Pods

The AeroGarden Harvest comes with one seed pod kit. The pods in the kit have seeds already in them. You start your garden without having to buy any seeds separately.

The kit includes six pods, six transparent grow domes, a bottle of nutrients, and an instructional booklet. If you buy a grow kit by itself, you’ll get a kit just like this one. Only the seeds in the pods will be different. AeroGarden sells seed pod kits with nine pods for use in the larger AeroGarden Bounty.

Upside and Downside

Many manufacturers sell hydroponic growing systems. Few (if any) provide seeded grow plugs in the box like AeroGarden. By providing the seed pod kit in the box, AeroGarden makes the Harvest an excellent “single box” gift option. Everything a person needs to start a garden (except water and electricity!) are in the box.

The downside of including the pod kit in the box is if this is your second or third or tenth AeroGarden, and you don’t intend to grow the herbs, you’ve paid for seed pods you won’t use. Idea: Trade with another AeroGarden aficionado for a kit you do want, or give it as a gift to an AeroGarden owner.

Pod Caps and the Nutrients

The bottle contains nutrients you’ll add to the water in the tub. The label on the bottle tells you how many milliliters to add based upon the size of your AeroGarden device. You may find it less messy and quicker to add nutrients if you use a dropper that holds one milliliter (mL). You supply the dropper.

The caps retain humidity for each pod, like tiny greenhouses. You’ll set a cap over each pod when you start your garden and remove the cap when the plant has germinated.

Labeling of the Pod

AeroGarden labels each seed pod with the name of the plant, how long germination takes, and how tall you can expect the plant to grow. AeroGarden also prints a lot number on the label. Although the label for these plants show you can expect the plant to germinate within 14 days, AeroGarden documentation states their guarantee is that their seed pods will germinate within 21 days.

Shape of the Pod

The AeroGarden pod is a cone-shaped plastic insert that holds a grow plug (sometimes called a sponge) made mostly of sorghum peat. A sticker covers the top of the cone.

The sticker reduces algae by controlling the amount of light entering the water in the tub.

The plant grows through the hole in the center of the sticker, and cuts in the sticker allow the plant stalk the room to grow larger than the original hole.

The Grow Plug

Compressed sorghum peat and other materials make up the grow plug in the pod. The plug holds its shape when soaking wet and over time as the plant grows.

The plant’s roots grow through the plug material down into the water; the plant stalk grows up through the top of the pod toward the light.

By providing a seed pod kit with each AeroGarden Harvest, AeroGarden ensures the proud new owner can have a garden started within a few minutes of opening the box. The AeroGarden Harvest comes pretty close to being able to make the claim, “Instant Garden, Just Add Water”!

Key Takeaways

This article showed you the contents of an AeroGarden Seed Pod Kit. The seed pods in the kit work in any current AeroGarden hydroponic growing system; they are not exclusive to the AeroGarden Harvest.

The seed pods contribute to the gardening system that makes the AeroGarden products so wonderful. When somebody tells you, “Just insert this pod into an AeroGarden Harvest, add water, and you’ll get a garden,” it sounds too good to be true. But that’s the magic of a system. All the components, including these pods, work together to grow healthy plants quickly, with minimal effort.

The AeroGarden Harvest comes with pods pre-seeded with herbs. You can purchase other seed pods with a variety of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies, and even flowers.

But, best of all, you can grow plants in your AeroGarden Harvest using your own seeds. Using the Grow Anything Kit, you can build your own grow plugs for use in your AeroGarden devices. The Grow Anything Kit is purchased separately. Keep reading to the next article to learn more.