I Never Thought I Could Garden in My Small Apartment, Until I Found This

I’ve always wanted to be a plant person, but it’s easier said than done for someone like me, who lives in a Chicago apartment and has a questionable green thumb. Not only is my indoor and outdoor space limited, but long, brutally cold and dark Chicago winters (and springs) also mean that the growing season is limited to just a few months of the year.

After a particularly dreary and frigid winter season, I decided to romanticize the final pre-summer stretch with some indoor greenery. I started getting served videos on social media of hydroponic plant growing systems, which claim to create the ideal growing environment indoors all year round for herbs, flowers, and some fruits and vegetables, in just water. There are countless hydroponic models, with most ranging from $400 to $1,500, but I settled on the AeroGarden Bounty Basic, a nine-pod indoor garden. Now I love my hydroponic garden so much, I can’t remember what it was like to not have it.

AeroGarden has a few different hydroponic model sizes, but I went with the Bounty Basic version, which has the ability to grow nine different plants without any of the mess and dirt you’d get from a regular potted plant. The growing deck measures 14 inches in diameter and 11.5 inches in height, which makes it compact enough where I can tuck it discreetly into the corner of my living room, but big enough where I can grow some bigger vegetables.

To accommodate larger plants, this model also comes with an extension that allows you to move the light up to 24 inches in height, as well as an optional trellis attachment for climbing varieties. 

The $149.99 model on Wayfair doesn’t come with seed pods, but you can purchase them separately on Amazon, or you can buy a full kit directly on AeroGarden’s website. For my first attempt, I decided to buy seeds for nine different herbs I frequently cook with to create a year-round herb garden that I hope will save me money on my grocery bill in the long run.

As an inexperienced gardener, I was surprised by how foolproof and low-effort the AeroGarden Bounty Basic is. Once it arrived, I put my seeds in the seed pods, inserted them in their slots in the deck, and then turned on the digital interface to do all the work for me.

Prompted by the machine, I picked the herb grow program so it could automatically optimize the ideal amount of water and light for my seeds. The model features a 30W LED grow light to make sure your plants get enough sunlight in any condition, which the website claims allows your indoor garden to grow up to five times faster than one planted outdoors in soil. 

I was also able to set an automatic timer for the daily hours of light (I’d recommend doing it at night if you don’t want to see the bright grow lights during the day). I filled up the water to the designated mark, added the instructed amount of plant food when prompted, and hit “start.” Over the next few weeks, I watched the little buds grow, and added water and extra plant food when it prompted me to do so. 

I also used the vacation mode setting when I was out of town for a week, and was happy to come back to a lush garden full of fresh herbs ready for me to make basil pesto and dill tzatziki sauce.

After spending way too much time scrolling through Reddit threads, I decided to clip back my basil and dill plants to allow the slower-growing plants like sage and tarragon to catch up and get enough light. I also took several gardeners’ advice and clipped the plants’ roots about one third of the total length every time I added plant food. This really helped prevent the roots from taking over the water bowl and getting tangled in the other plants. 

Now that it looks like Chicago’s last frost might be over, I also decided to experiment with germinating flower seeds for my balcony planters — a much cheaper option compared to buying fully grown blooms at a nursery like I did last year. I potted my now fully-grown basil plants in soil, and used their empty pod spots in the deck to do the same thing I’d done with my herbs. Even without changing the setting on my machine for flowers, my zinnia seeds sprouted into tiny seedlings in just a day-and-a-half’s time. 

Now that spring is finally here, I’m excited about experimenting with different flower seeds (and making gorgeous bouquets for myself and my friends at just a fraction of the cost of a florist), as well as potentially planting tomato and jalapeño plants to get the summer vibes started a little early. 

Buy: AeroGarden Bounty Indoor Garden, Wayfair, $149.99