When more than one pod in a seed kit fails to germinate, or seedlings show yellowed leaves or are stunted growth, chances are they are experiencing a nutrient deficiency. This is generally caused by one of two things:

Using water that is high in dissolved minerals (“hard water”, well water, or water that has been through a water softener), or

Nutrient tablets that were damaged by high heat or humidity, which occasionally occurs in transport or storage.
If your plants are experiencing these symptoms, it will be important for future success to determine which of these may be causing the problem.

Water

Water that is high in dissolved minerals can cause problems with growth in the Aerogarden and many areas in England do have “hard” tap water. If you are using “hard” water, well water, spring water, or “softened” water, you will experience germination and growth problems in your AeroGarden. The dissolved minerals in the water will block the proper uptake of the nutrients by the plants. Hard water is the number one cause of growth problems in the AeroGarden. Most water filters do not remove minerals.
If you think you may have high mineral-content water, we recommend switching to bottled distilled water (not “spring”, “drinking” or “purified” water) instead, which is available at most supermarkets.

Nutrients

If your Seed Kit experienced very high heat or humidity is shipping or storage, the nutrients may become damaged, causing the same nutrient deficiency symptoms. If your nutrients appeared to have dissolved and leaked out of their container in storage/transport please contact us for replacement nutrient tablets (if the item was originally purchased directly from us).
*Please note – nutrients which appear wet or partially dissolved in their bag are not necessarily damaged – if they are in twin packs of just two nutrients you can cut the bag in half and rinse out the contents in a cup of tepid water (including the nutrient tablets themselves) – then empty the contents of this cup into the Aerogarden water bowl. Be sure to store your nutrients in a cool dry place (a fridge is ideal) to prevent any further absorption of liquid.

The programme was due to be aired live on Monday 30th June at 7pm on BBC 1. As many of you are aware, with the tennis pedigree that exists  in the UK, we take every opportunity to show the nation our talents, whether it be Chris Eaton, Laura Robson or Andy Murray, and so it happened that the Wimbledon Mens last 16 singles game between Andy Murray and Richard Gasquet on Day 7 of the Championship was shuffled from BBC 2 to BBC 1. All i can say was that we were rather dissapointed.

 Pictures of the aerogarden that would or should have been aired are here, the chillis are looking pretty good, we are sure you, Adrian and Andy would have agreed!

Click here to see the original article on the three seed kits in our warehouse during the first two months of their growth

These shots were taken on 03/06/2008

The tomato plants are now at full height – even with the extended lamp height which is shown elsewhere in the blog. We are now cutting back and pinching the growth at the top to encourage the plants to bush further down below. They have started to flower and we hope that we’ll have shots of the tomatoes at some point soon. At the moment it is not the prettiest plant. Customers can clearly see why we only have three active pods.

The salad greens are continuously growing and being eaten by people in the warehouse. The height of the lamp is at the tallest default setting for the Aerogarden.

The Chilli peppers are now at the heighest extended setting. As with the cherry tomatoes they need cut back and pinched on a regular basis to ensure they are bushing out. The flowers are all over the plants and we expect to start cropping soon.