An indoor herb garden not only gives you fresh herbs all year around but it also adds greenery and life to your home.
The best part is that even gardening amateurs can grow delicious herbs. Need some help with your indoor gardening? Here are some of the most popular pieces of tech to grow an abundant indoor herb garden:
Soil-Based Automated Gardening Systems Are Easy to Maintain
Traditional indoor gardening is soil-based, using pots with potting soil. But you can make this type of gardening easier by starting with an automated indoor gardening kit.
For example, the Click and Grow Smart Garden 3 is a gardening starter kit that provides water, light, and nutrients for your indoor herb garden automatically, while using less water and energy than gardening without a kit. The whole system is a small container that can fit on your countertop complete with overhead adjustable-height LED grow lights.
You can choose from more than 75 biodegradable plant pods to add to this device, including flowering herbs like wild strawberries and lavender.
The pods contain seeds and soil, and the Smart Garden 3 has a water tank that lasts two to three weeks with most plants. It’s easy to monitor the water level and refill it, and plastic biodomes create a greenhouse effect, increasing temperatures for faster sprouting.
Best of all, you can control this indoor growing system from an app on your smartphone.
Hydroponics Use Less Water & Other Resources
Instead of soil, a hydroponic system grows plants in plant food: a mixture of water and nutrients. Since hydroponic systems don’t create runoff or water areas which are larger than needed, they can also be more efficient than traditional gardening.
The AeroGarden Harvest Elite hydroponic gardening kit has a sleek, compact shape that comes in a variety of finishes. It can grow up to six plants five times faster than in soil, and the plants can grow up to a foot tall.
Growing such tall plants couldn’t be easier thanks to the kit’s:
- 20-watt LED light which turns on and off automatically
- Customizable light cycle for different herbs
- Adjustable height grow light
The digital display makes controlling the Harvest Elite easy. Plus, it gives you convenient reminders when your plants need more plant food or water.
An Aquaponic Indoor Herb Garden Uses Fish to Help Herbs Grow
An aquaponic system is like a hydroponic system, but it uses fish, water, plants, and nitrifying bacteria in a symbiotic relationship.
The fish live in a tank, and the plants grow on top. The plants get nutrients from the waste that the fish produce. And in turn, the plants’ roots filter and clean the water.
The Back to the Roots Water Garden has a large, clear water tank that’s big enough for a betta fish or other common type of pet fish. The Water Garden comes with:
- Fish food
- A water pump
- Wheatgrass seeds
- Radish seeds
- 3 grow bins above the water
- A coupon for a betta fish
- Educational materials about aquaponics
Though there are lots of parts to this system, setting it up couldn’t be simpler:
- Add seeds
- Plug in the water pump
- Choose a fish and introduce it to its new habitat
- Sprinkle some fish food into the water
If you don’t want a fish, you can use this device as a purely hydroponic garden. However, a fish makes this system easier to maintain and more sustainable and environmentally friendly than many other options.
One thing to keep in mind is that the ecosystem isn’t completely self-sustaining. The plants help clean the tank, but you’ll still need to change the water every few months and feed the fish regularly. That said, the Water Garden makes a unique decoration and it’s an excellent way to teach kids about ecosystems.
Aeroponics Uses Even Less Water Than Hydroponics
Aeroponics is an advanced form of hydroponics. Instead of growing plants in water or plant food, it sprays or drips nutrient-rich water on plants’ exposed roots. This type of indoor herb garden is one of the most efficient.
If you want to grow your own herbs using aeroponics, try the Juice Plus+ Tower Garden HOME. It can help you grow up to 32 plants and uses up to 98% less water than soil-based gardening.
You don’t have to weed or dig, and the plants grow in rockwool. Rockwool is made from basalt, a type of volcanic rock with many fibers where plant roots can grow.
Gardeners usually germinate the seeds separately and then transfer them to the Tower Garden after about three weeks. But you can also buy seedlings at your local home garden store that are already at this stage.
A reservoir at the bottom of this vertical indoor herb garden holds plant food and water. Then, a low-wattage pump moves water to the top of the garden and then drips a small amount on the roots every 15 minutes.
The Tower Garden HOME mostly takes care of itself, but you’ll need to replace the water and clean the pump filter occasionally.
Tech Makes Maintaining an Indoor Herb Garden Easy
With advanced gardening tech, growing your own indoor herb garden without a green thumb is no problem. You can use one of these devices along with a gardening app to customize reminders and make sure you don’t forget any aspect of plant care.
Not only does an indoor herb garden provide plenty of access to fresh herbs, but many indoor gardens are also more sustainable and environmentally friendly than buying herbs at a store. So, an indoor herb garden is not only fun but it helps reduce your impact on the environment, too.
