Day 65 / Day 1 - Big day for the indoor gardener

Now that I have two extra shelves, I decided to go with the silver Aerogarden as my third unit. Since I had two black ones already, I figured I'd mix it up a little.

Unlike the shelf, assembling the new Aerogarden was a joy as usual. 

It quite literally took me under a minute to put it together. Just pop the arm into the base, attach the lights into the hood, plug the hood into the base, and plug the whole thing into the wall. In fact, it took me longer to type that than to actually do it!

It took me another 30 seconds to plant the pods. 

I decided to go with the salad green pods. In my on-and-off resolution to eat healthier, I told myself that I'd eat more salads if I had access to fresh lettuce every day. The life of a single guy who doesn't happen to own a bunny is that you buy an entire head of lettuce and end up throwing away 95% of it. Either that or buy individual bags of a few lettuce leaves for five bucks a pop! (Of course it didn't hurt that it was 40% off when my local Linens N Things was selling everything on clearance...)

Everything was the same as all other Aerogardens, except I had to select the light setting for "Salad Greens". Aerogarden units are intelligent in that when the plants are initially growing the lights will remain on for 18 hours and off for 6 hours, and when the plants are mature, it'll change the cycle to 17 hours on and 7 hours off. Seems that the good folks at Aerogrow really put some science into it. 

This is a kit that'll grow different varieties of lettuce. The amazing thing is, it doesn't grow heads of lettuce, but individual leaves of lettuce! How they manage this I don't quite understand. I'll just chalk it up to modern science.

Here's what the pods looked like on the second shelf of the 3-Shelf Unit. 

My dream, of course, is to be able to do two things: first, to make a garden salad complete with cherry tomatoes and my own lettuce. Second, to make a BLT using my very own L and my very own T.

So, what to put on the top shelf? I decided to plant Aerogarden's "Holiday Herbs" kit. When I first heard the name, I thought it'd be growing plants of red and green sprinkles or something. But it's actually a great kit with my favorite cooking herbs (parsley, sage, oregano, and thyme). It's one herb short of "Scarborough Fair" (but happily, I do have already have three rosemary plants).

Planting my pods of lettuce and herbs took all of 30 second. Admittedly, if I ever move to a house with a yard, I'm a bit spolied now. I don't know if I could ever go back to tilling soil and seed starters and critters again...

Here's what my indoor garden looks like now:

And no, my kitchen didn't do an impersonation of the walls of Jericho. Not yet, not least.