Unboxing the AeroGarden Harvest - The Tray

The AeroGarden Harvest tray determines the purpose of the device. The Harvest comes with the plant growing tray. The growing tray sports 6 holes for pods you’ll use to grow your plants. The tray also offers a removable cap for covering the tub access.

AeroGarden offers three tray options. The seed-starter tray has 23 smaller holes than the 6 growing holes in the included tray. You can grow seedlings from seed and transplant the seedlings elsewhere. And the microgreens tray provides a flat surface for growing sprouts you can add to your salad or recipes.

The Harvest tray distributes water to the six plant holes. The tray has no moving parts, cords, or cables. It’s all of three pieces.

Well, technically, five pieces. The two black rubber plugs come out. Remove these before washing the tray, since you could lose one down the drain if it falls out over the sink. The holes could support a lightweight trellis.

The tray is top-rack dishwasher safe on the basic settings. Check the AeroGarden documentation for specifics.

Water Flow

Water enters the tray from a tube on its underside and exits at each of the six holes. In the close-up view of one hole in the image below, you see that the water simply pours from inside the tray.

A pod seated in this hole will contain a grow plug, shown in a later article in this series. The water pouring out of the tray soaks the grow plug, keeping the environment for the seed moist.

The image below shows the underside of the AeroGarden Harvest growing tray, modeled by Toby the cat.

A tube projects from the tray, designed to pair with the tube coming up from the water pump in the tub. The water enters the tray and exits through the opening at each hole. The bump on the edge of each hole is where the water exits.

Disassembly of the Tray

In the image above, you can see six clips holding the top half of the tray to the bottom half of the tray. One clip is on each short edge and two are on each long edge.

To separate the two halves of the growing tray, push a tab toward the center of the tray and insert a fingernail or credit card between the halves. Slide your finger or card along the edge, carefully releasing each tab as you go.

The tabs on the tray seem fairly sturdy, but it would be a shame to break one. Take your time and you should be fine.

The only time you’ll need to disassemble the tray is for deep cleaning. You can probably clean the tray without disassembling it most times.

The disassembled tray reveals how the water flows from the pump to the plants. In the image above, the tray is upside down. When the water enters the tube (visible on the right half) it fills the cavity bounded by the wall surrounding the holes (visible in the left half).

A boundary keeps the water from filling the entire inside of the tray. The boundary rings the six holes. Notice each hole in the top half of the tray (left side) has a notch through which water flows. Quite clever!

Key Takeaways

In this article, you learned the AeroGarden Harvest growing tray participates in the growing system beyond just holding the plants in place. The tray distributes water pushed to it by the pump.

AeroGarden offers two other trays, sold separately. Your Harvest can grow six plants to maturity, grow twenty-three seeds to seedlings for transplant, and grow microgreens.

The next article discusses the AeroGarden Harvest control panel.