AeroGarden PRO100 with Gourmet Herb Seed Kit | 
| Brand: AeroGrow
List Price: $229.95
Buy New: $140.00
You Save: $89.95 (39%)
New (16) from $140.00
Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 751
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 13
Dimensions (in): 18 x 15.5 x 10.5
MPN: 2500-00B
Model: 2500-01S
UPC: 857459001696
EAN: 0857459001696
ASIN: B000REW1S8
Release Date: May 29, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Beautiful brushed stainless accents | | • | 50% faster growth than standard AeroGarden | | • | 24-hour light cycle | | • | Tells you when to add water & nutrients and replace bulbs | | • | Includes Gourmet Herb Seed Kit, grow bulbs, and everything you need to grow now |
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Product Description
The AeroGarden Pro 100 mini greenhouse is the easy soil-free way to grow lush, delicious vegetables, herbs, even wildflowers in your own kitchen with little effort. No gardening experience is needed to enjoy plant harvests anywhere in your home all year-round. AeroGarden is the world's first indoor smart garden. AreoGarden plants grow twice as fast than plants grown in soil. You simply insert pre-seeded grow pods, add water and nutrient tablets, plug in cord and select a button for your plant type. Often within a day, the seeds begin to sprout and quickly you can enjoy fresh vegetables and herbs month after month. AeroGarden comes with the Gourmet Herb Seed Kit offering seven different varieties of gourmet herbs. 8 1/2 lbs. 18"L x 15 3/4"H x 9 5/8"D. Model: Pro 100.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 INDY, DON'T LOOK! July 31, 2007
T. Thatcher
210 out of 251 found this review helpful
Easy assembly and directions, nice looking unit. The light is INSANELY BRIGHT - we put it on the bartop and it was like having the Arc of the freaking Covenant in the kitchen. It's good for eliminating Nazis from your cooking area as a bonus, I guess. I mean, it almost completely illuminated a 1 bedroom apartment. The pictures make it look like it's a nice, warm, soft and comforting glow; in reality, it's the glow of importing a firey stellar object made of nuclear gasses into your home. So... You may want to have a bigger space where you can put it someplace a little out of the way. Someplace like deep space, where you can bask comfortably in its rays and perhaps provide life-giving solar energy to another as yet barren, cold planet.
It's very quiet, though. Has a nice little water trickly noise if you're nearby, not enough to be distracting whatsoever.
The seed kits are a ripoff hands-down. I ordered an extra one, the "salsa" cherry tomato and jalapeno kit - twenty dollars nets you three pods with seeds and four plastic spacer plugs to stop up the other slots. For twenty dollars I can buy enough tomatos and jalapenos to live on a really boring but spicy salsa for like a week solid, even with organic produce. As an aside, they forgot to include any of the actual nutrient tablets with my extra kit, so I'll be calling customer service. Finally, they greatly over-packaged the seed kit in an attempt to make it look like it's really more than it is for the money.
After all that, for being a holy object, the source of all life on Earth, a made-for-TV scam, and the potential bringer of small quantities of edible greenery, it's kind of a neat toy, which is really why I bought it in the first place. Make of that what you will. I give it a noncommittal three stars, possibly to change dependent on herbal outcome.
 High Promise, Less Delivery November 30, 2007
Sophist
85 out of 102 found this review helpful
High Promise, Less Delivery
I started growing tomatoes with my AeroGarden about two months ago. I got my first flower a few days ago, the first step towards tomatoes. Unfortunately, the pump on the device stopped working the next day.
The FAQ on their web site advises me to open the device, take it apart, and clean the pump. They provide seven (7!) pages of instructions to follow and the process requires the use of a flat head screwdriver, small pliers, butter knife and soap. You also have to provide containers to put the liquid in and find a place for the plants that require their roots to be maintained under water. They claim the cleaning will take 20 to 25 minutes on the first attempt.
It actually took about 15 minutes to complete, but then my pump was perfectly clean! The problem was not the pump, the problem was that the root system became so extensive after two months of growing, that the mass of roots blocked the pump intake located at the bottom of the tower.
When your pump stops working, I suggest before you go to the bother of taking the pump apart, that you first try trimming the root system around the bottom of the pump tower. That is a MUCH EASER REPAIR compared to taking the whole thing apart. At any rate, I put everything back together, and the pump now works.
I have several suggestions for AeroGarden management. Number one suggestion, do something about your NON RESPONSIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT. Perhaps they answer the phone, but if you send them an email, don't expect a response. Its been one week since I sent them a question about the pump failure... no response to this date. Email communications is worthless with this company, so if you need help, call them. From what I have read about their phone customer service, you might want to have a few snacks at hand and use a speaker phone so you can do other things while you wait.
Number two, I suggest that management learn a bit about a concept called "Maintainability". Its related to designing a product so its easy to maintain. Apparently the pump on these things need to be maintained. A little point that is not mentioned in the sales literature. Having to take the thing apart to get at the pump so you can clean the filter is silly and reflects a lack of design competence. It would be a cinch to design something better this. I hope potential competitors are listening.
Number Three, add to your pump failure instructions the fact that the root system could be blocking the water intake at the bottom of the pump tower. If your pump stops working, the first thing you should do is to move the roots away from the bottom of the pump tower. You can trim the bottom of the roots with a scissor if you are careful. If that works, you have just saved yourself a lot of trouble that you did not need to go through.
Number Four, the growth feeding tablets are hydroscopic. That means they attract water. Keeping them in the little plastic bag provided will, in time, result in their merging together into a large amorphous mass. Management should provide a more water vapor resistant plastic vile to keep the growth feeding tablets in. Of course, that might cost five cents, so its not likely going to happen. So at the minimum, I suggest that users of the thing supply the necessary vile.
In Summary, we have an integrating product, where little attention has been devoted to maintenance design. We have incomplete instructions with respect to trouble shooting in the event the pump stops working. We have non responsive customer service, so if you do have a problem, and you expect to save your current plants, you are pretty much on your own.
By the way, why is this thing called an "Aero" garden? Its a hydroponics garden so it would seem that "Aqua" or "Hydro" or "H2O" garden would be a more appropriate name.
Would I recommend it? I bought the device because I wanted to learn more about hydroponics gardening. I expected little, so my expectations were met. Its a thought provoking gadget, but given all of the faults in conjunction with non responsive customer support, I have to rate it more in the un-met promise category... that's two stars. I can't justify higher ratings when you have a company that provides customer service at this level of ineptitude.
 Grow herbs and more, even with the "thumb of death" August 31, 2007
Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA)
68 out of 72 found this review helpful
This is a remarkable device, one that is a boon to apartment dwellers with no patch of garden, or to anyone who wants an indoor garden that's nearly foolproof.
The Pro 100 has a black shell, stainless steel plate and trim, and a newer feature called "adaptive growth intelligence" which is supposed to automatically monitor water, light, and nutrient delivery for maximum growth. I think it may be a complex timer that is keyed to what type of plant you choose from the front panel (ie, herb, lettuce, tomato) because it seems to demand water the same time every week, though I fill it up whenever I see the level dip below an indicator post inside. The Pro does tell you when to add new nutrient tablets and tells you what phase you are growing--sprouts, new growth or mature plant.
I have to say, I have probably a "black thumb." I can grow aloe plants really well, pothos (ubiquitous viney house plant) and I once had a good crop of morning glories but normally, my gardening efforts are pretty sad. I don't trust myself to keep an outdoor herb garden growing.
But I like to cook with fresh herbs, and I got really tired of trying to find chervil, let alone keeping basil and mint from going all black and soft in the fridge. After reading a lot of discussion about the Aerogrow and seeing a tempting sale, I decided to spring for one and try it out.
The device is a rounded vessel that holds a pump and water, and a light attached at the top. The surface of the lower vessel has a stainless steel plate with seven wells. You put plastic seed pods in these wells, cover with plastic "bio-domes" and add tablets of nutrient and let 'er rip. The pump feeds the foam in the plug where seeds are embedded. The light encourages the seedlings. Within weeks, you have a crop of various herbs or lettuce or flowers.
The "razor blade" of this device is the seed pod. It is a specially designed unit, like a small plastic frame rather like a thimble. It holds foam plastic, split in two. Inside the split, the manufacturer places some seeds and puts a paper collar with the name of the herb on top. The collar serves also to support the plant as it grows taller. The other "razor blade" is the grow bulb, which needs replacing after some months because lights grow dimmer as they are used. Eventually, the grow light is too weak to do its job and you need a replacement. I say "razor blade" because these disposables are unique to the unit and you must purchase them from retailers who sell Aerogarden products. There are master gardener kits with special pods you can use to insert your own seeds--probably a great idea for gardeners who need to get a real jump on the growing season, such as folks in New England where the season can be as short as 60 days.
I tried three kits so far: first, I used the gourmet herb kit. This had two types of basil (purple and green), mint, parsley, cilantro, dill and chives. I got a great crop of basil. Enough to share some baggies of this essential herb with my assistant at work. I got a bumper crop of dill, plenty of chives for breakfasts of omelets, and eventually, some viney mint that seems to be of the apple mint variety. Not enough to do tabbouleh salad, but enough to use in drinks and garnish fruits. Only the cilantro failed to grow. No seed even showed a sprout. I called the support number, and very polite folks immediately sent me a replacement and noted they felt it would take more than four weeks to sprout cilantro. Now, some of the herbs are slow to grow (parsley is notoriously slow) but neither pod ever showed a ghost of cilantro. I assume that the seeds supplied to the company might have been mistakenly irradiated food-grade spice seeds and not fresh crop growing seeds. In any case, I got absolutely nowhere with cilantro, a shame, as that is a very tender herb that doesn't keep well. The parsley grew too slowly to be of any real use, as well. But it did grow.
I eventually depotted the herbs into a kitchen flower pot (cutting off the plastic frame and leaving on the foam, into which the roots had really made a home.) Then I tried the lettuce. It sprouted in three days and in a month, I had enough to make some light salads and yes, share a bag with the assistant. But it seemed a waste to let the Aerogarden grow something as mundane as lettuce, and I prefer mache (cornsalad, feldsalat) or arugula to leaf lettuce, so I harvested the rest of the crop and started the French Herb kit. This is chervil, sorrel, parsley, chives, Marseilles basil, sage and savory. Everything sprouted immediately except the parsley and chervil, notable slow-pokes of the herb world.
I sure like having fresh herbs to hand on the kitchen counter. I can even see the attraction of having three or these mounted on an optional wall rack, but that is quite a luxury. However, a determined gourmet or gardener in a harsh climate or restrictive living setting could satisfy their green thumb with such an arrangement.
The customer support is fast and friendly. I have heard stories of failed pumps but mine is quite reliable, and I did have a light give up the ghost way early, and this was cheerfully replaced by customer service. The unit is attractive, easy to use (hey, my black thumb has yet to deter the Aerogarden) and it is a lot of fun to watch the plants grow taller and taller. I'd say this is a great idea for kids as well as cooks who like fresh herbs. As to the other kits, there are a number of them and more are being made available. I can purchase them at my local farmstand-garden shop and that's quite handy. Of course they are also available online.
The kits so far that I know of are the French Herb, Gourmet Herb and Lettuce I mentioned and:
Japanese Herb--two colors of shiso, mitsuba, chives, shungiku and cress
South of the Border: Epazote, cilantro, oregano, thyme, parsley, basil
Year Round Gourmet Herb (extra herbs like savory, sage, lemon basil, and the ones in the regular gourmet kit)
Holiday Herb (parsley, sage, oregano, thyme)
International Basil
Italian Herb
Cascading Petunia
Cherry Tomato
Salsa Garden
Beans
Snow Peas
Chili Peppers
More greens (arugula, mesclun, baby greens, chef pack, romaine)
And I assume more packs are in the works. All come with nutrient tablets and complete instructions.
I give this two (greenish) thumbs up.
Aerogarden Pro100 July 1, 2007
Terrie Demlow (San Diego, CA USA)
45 out of 49 found this review helpful
I have had my garden for 10 days now. It is working great so far without any problems. I have the gourmet herb set and all but one so far have started growing in different stages. It is fun to watch it, it seems to almost grow before your eyes. I would recommend putting this in a room where the light isn't going to disturb your sleeping, if at all possible, it is very bright! Customer service at aerogrow is very helpful and curtious if you have any type of questions. I would recommend this to anyone really, especially if you don't have the "green thumb" or live in apt and can't have an outside garden.
Well It is now September 22 and I still have the two basils, thyme, and parsely coming on strong! I have had some problems with dill and parsley but aerogrow has been very helpful and even sent a replacement. The only thing I would recommend is that If you live where it gets real HOT during the summer and you don't run your a/c during the day all the time, consider getting something different. The herbs tend to look wilted at times due to the heat but other wise they are fine. Plan on using a little bit at a time or trying to dry it for later use in a larger amount. I am going to try the lettuce next then the strawberries to see how they do.AeroGarden Pro 100 with Gourmet Herb Seed Kit
I expected better performance.... January 2, 2008
Lisa Field (Alpine, New York)
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
I have to say I'm not thrilled with my Aerogardens. I purchased two of the Pro units. One I set up with the Salsa mix...two tomato plants and one pepper plant...not much for $20. The second unit I started with the salad greens. I was thrilled when they germinated in two days and grew rapidly. They did great for about a week and then one by one they all died. I called customer support. The representative wasn't very enlightening...she said they had never had that happen before (I find that hard to believe!). The pump, lights, etc were all in working order and I'm anal retentive about following directions so I don't know what happened and they had no clue either. They did send out another kit no problem. Since it wasn't going to arrive for several weeks, I cleaned the unit out and planted the snow peas kit. Well, no problem with them growing. They have outgrown the unit. The directions say nothing about trimming them. The plant supports provided proved woefully inadequate as some of the plants are now close to two feet long. No flowers yet, but I'm keeping an open mind. My first unit's pump stopped working. Thanks to another reviewer's advice, I cleaned off the pump port and yea, it started working again. I wish they would mention that somewhere in the instructions. So far, I'm very underwhelmed with these units. It appears a lot of folks really love them and it was based on their reviews that I purchased my Aerogardens. I hope time will change my opinion.
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