I had been wanting to buy an AeroGarden ever since we saw the first ads. Of course, Hubby sighed and rolled his eyese, but he didn't try to dissuade me. He knows that I am a hopelessly messy gardner with a great love for plants and an equal penchant for killing them.

We live in upstairs condos and move every 4 to 6 months, so when it comes to growing things, we have some pretty odd restrictions. We cannot transport the live plants across state lines, so they have to grow fast. I cannot stand to give them away or throw them away each time we pack to go, so they have to be tasty and nutritious. Furthermore, we are busy people, so I simply do not have time for all of that when to water, when to feed, what to feed, shade or sun stuff. They have to tend themselves. They have to be fast-growing and tolerant of heat. Small is also nice. Look, my Basil plants are less than TWO DAYS old:

But this is different. So far, the quiet and attractive planter has doubled as a Happy Light, so all the fuss about how expensive it was goes out the window in that it cost less than the Full-Spectum lamp we bought to brighten up our dreary Northern California kitchen. Despite my qualms, the unit could not have been easier to set up and install. The seed "pods" were a joy to select and pop in.

Because our next domicile will be in a small town in the Mohave desert, I wasn't sure about the whole Plants Surviving the Heat thing, so we started out with the brand new 3-hole planter, designed for cubicles, one imagines. A veteran rule breaker, I ignored the warning not to mix pods from the different seed packets, putting basil in next to marigolds and dianthus.

The theory is that each kit contains the exact nutrients required by the specific plants included. We have grown basil together in the same pot with marigold before, so I decided to take my chances.

The colorful and informative labels are cute. They packaged the marigold and dianthus together with snapdragons under the label "Incredible Edibles" but did not say what was in the package. I had been hoping for Nasturtiums. No matter, we ordered the Master Gardening Kit, too, which facilitates growing our own seeds. If these keep growing, we will try that next.

I do not think we will eat the marigolds, but the thought is nice.

AeroGarden 3 is extremely light and portable. If this works out we were planning to try their Pro 200 next, but now I am torn between trying that and just getting a few more of these little ones. The would appear to be much easier to pack and carry around.

This kind of gardening is not going away. We bought 2 more of the AeroGarden Deluxe units, and I have gerrymandered a few cloning chambers on my own to hold all of the fast-growing beautiful and edible plants this kind of gardening makes possible.

I also started a blog about them, called Ann's AeroGarden Updates.