Piffffllle on all of you. I have to wear reading glasses now if I really want to read the fine print any more. I can't do all the tilling, hauling, spreading mulch and digging holes in the garden any more and I really don't want to. I stopped cleaning gutters and blowing leaves off the roof before I moved but I was up the ladder in a New York minute the other day when My grandson confided in me that he was afraid of heights after I had him climb up there to remove a tree limb. He finally did get the limb off, I'm sure because he didn't want to be outdone by his grandmother. I'm checking with the hospital about mixng up babies because MY grandson surely wouldn't be afraid of heights.:0) I still cook all the time if that counts for anything, and I can still chase dust bunnies with the best of them. I never used to have backaches but just spent most of last week and this weekend taking muscle relaxers and lying on the heating pad. Lord luv a duck, I feel like such a wuss compared to the rest of you. I talk to myself a lot but haven't talked to any trees lately. I did bend my bumper on some bricks but if you had to try and manuever your car out of my backyard with all those trucks parked back there you would have dented your bumper to. I don't even think that counts because Neil still doesn't know I did it, sometimes it helps when ones spouse can't see anything. The more I think about it, I do pretty darn good chasing our 4 pound ball of fluff all over this house to retrieve all the things she tries to scarf down that she isn't supposed to have, like twist ties from the bread, a nickle, broomstraws, strings, her poop, well you get the idea. I must have crawled under the sofa, bed, chairs a million times today to get the little squirt's ball for her. Shoot! now that I think about it, I'm getting around like a spring chicken and maybe I have a few good years left in these old bones. Marda, I couldn't even stand up on a skateboard so my hat's off to you. Sheila, I have that book. Suzy, I've had thin fine hair all my life so I expect to go bald any day now. Do they still make wigs? I'm going to bed now, it'll take me all night to fall asleep and tomorrow I may just try out a new skate board. Yeah right!

No problem, hydroponics is a relaxing and productive thing to do. I have never used an AeroGarden. Everything I do is home-made, which is the case of most of the frequent posters in the forum in the past year. If you want to compare notes with AeroGarden users specifically there might be someone else, or perhaps somehow through the company facebook page. When I try to help with your AeroGarden, I am considering it a limited size infomercial version of a decently designed top trickle flow Deep Water Culture (DWC) system. There is really nothing "Aero" about it, other than it looks aerodynamic if you put a rocket engine and fins on it. The roots are in deep water with a gap of air in the upper root zone. It will work on the same type of nutrients in similar concentrations as we use in all of our setups, and for light, the plants have their needs which has little to do with the hydroponic design. Yours comes with lights and you can buy supplemental ones to grow plants faster and with more light requirements. You need to check the total wattage - i.e. there may be supplemental lights added if you inherited the unit. As for electric bill, that's easy. I think nearly every American has seen that same huge jump in December and it's a whole lot more than the puny AeroGarden. Just determine the wattage. Don't worry much about your pump, that is very minor, probably well under 10W. It's the lights. Lets say yours is running a daily average 60W and you pay 12 cents a kwh. That is extremely low light usage, but I don't know what version you have and some LED units may even be less. That is ball park for this sort of basic setup, according to AeroGarden which is very small once you get into hydroponics. That setup would add up to an extra $6 per month to your electric bill. If you run it for 18 hours accumulated on-time per day (6 hr off), then it will be an extra $4.50 to reflect it is being run 75% of the time. Your question about pruning reflects a limitation of your AeroGarden. Most people will prune a lot of the suckers and train their plants into defined vines for the trellaces or supports they use, especially if they feel they have stong production in the main parts. Yours is quite limited due to the design. You have really no room to grow huge because the lights need to be close and it just outgrows the little herb-garden sized plot you have. So the best advice there is do your best and trim areas that will have low light exposure or simply get too big. It's a bit of artwork. Oh, and put it near a window to get extra real Sunlight if you are lucky to have such a place in the house. Compost tea is probably too weak and potentially a source of bad bacteria and molds for this since it is indoors under weak light and probably not optimal airflow and humid. But heck people are creative and plants are adaptable, just their growth rates will reflect how much nutrient they get and how much light they get. The hydroponic fertilizers I suggested are profession products for relatively higher performance systems. If you want to do a home made compost tea, it's best to learn about all the fertilizer options out there first and then spend your time developing something to meet your personal preferences in the realm of sustainable and organic practices if this is important to you. That's part of the reason I suggested starting small with like 2.2 pounds of an easy powdered hydro fertilizer ... and just read and research a lot on the internet and you will see thousands of opinions that will be helpful to get you wherever you'd like this to bring you. AeroGarden is a cute gift idea and a great way to be introduced to hydroponics. It is similar, but less expensive, in some ways to the Tower Garden in both gimmick marketing strategy and hype, but just look at what is under the hood and you will see these are just some designs of a huge spectrum of possibilities. As long as you are growing indoors, though it may be the best show in town for you over the winter. When springtime comes this list will become alive because that's when pure Sunlight is free and far more powerful than any economical indoor lighting and we can really do what we want without using the 1,000 Watt lighting systems that do make productions much more expensive.

So far, along with the the packets the boys took to school, we have planted hostas (about 10 of them) 2 bleeding hearts, 10 dahlia tubers, another 10 Allstar Strawberries, another type of canna tuber, marigolds (12 plants), Salvia (12 plants), Snapdragons (36 plants), Dusty Millers (36 plants), Alyssum (36 plants), wave petunias (24 plants),Lily of the Valley- 20 pink, 20 white. We have also planted marigold seeds - 4 packets (BIG packets), Cannas- two types 4 packages, Brazilian Fireworks 1 packet, Pride of Barbados 1 packet, 10 packets of Morning glories, 10 packets of perennial sweet peas, 5 packets of Forget me Nots, 10 packets of 4 o'clocks, 10 packets of Salvia, 5 packets of Lantana, 5 packets of butterfly weed, 5 packets of Ice plant. That's the count so far today. We're not finished yet, just came in to eat dinner and rest a bit. We'll work inside sowing more flats here in a little while :) Not sure how you're converting plants to packets of seeds, or how many seeds you're considering a packet. I know that a one of those marigold packets filled 2 72 count flats. But, however you're tallying it up, we've done a LOT of planting today! So, any ideas on how many carried through today? Or about how close you got to your goal? Kathy~ heading back to the seed sowing :)

Thanks man. I found one slug crawl up to the highest bed in my pallet garden. My mistake for putting a chard veggie patch. Does anyone see slugs or snails attacking their adenium?. I would like to grow a row of DRs where I currently have firesticks on a ground level raised bed. The slugs attacked both ornamental cactus/agaves and succulents in that bed.