5 Best Things to Grow in Aerogarden

An Aerogarden makes a fantastic way to grow foods hydroponically, in a small space inside your home. This compact efficient little plant nursery comes with everything you need to start growing the herbs, vegetables or fruits it may come with. But what happens when you’re ready to plant more foods? What are the best things to grow in your Aerogarden?

These are our favorite 5 things to grow in our own aerogarden

herbs
vegetable seeds
micro dwarf tomatoes
micro dwarf peppers
salad greens

Our favorite 5 things to grow in our own Aerogarden are herbs, tomatoes, peppers, leafy greens and it’s where we start all kinds of vegetable seeds indoors!

It’s important to note that not all varieties of these herbs and vegetables are suitable for growing in an Aerogarden. Most varieties will be too big, and after a few weeks will need to be transplanted into a pot or outdoors into a larger space.

Best Things to Grow in Aerogarden, and why!

Herbs grown from cuttings while growing in Aerogarden! Basil, parsley, oregano, chives.

#1 HERBS!

Herbs are great to grow in an Aerogarden because they grow relatively fast and easy. Also, because it’s their leaves we harvest, cutting and pruning before they get too big just makes for even more deliciousness! Many Aerogarden models come with an herb kit to start with, making it super easy to learn how to use the system plus herbs make it an almost guaranteed success on your first try!

Also, grow more herbs from your herbs! Stick a cutting from basil, mint, dill, parsley in water for a couple of weeks and watch new roots grow! Then plant in a small pot and stick on a sunny windowsill, in a sunny hanging basket spot, or on a patio or balcony. Not all herbs will grow easily from cuttings, but it’s fun to try and see what will work!

Herbs that grow great in Aerogardens: parsley, thyme, oregano, Thai Basil, Genovese Basil, dill, mint.

#2 Vegetable Seeds!

Start your vegetable garden seeds indoors for a head start! Most vegetable seeds can be started hydroponically indoors with a grow light, which makes the Aerogarden system a perfect solution.

Vegetable seeds that are great to start in your Aerogarden: tomatoes, peppers, leafy (salad) greens, kale, herbs.

It’s important to keep an eye on the larger types of foods growing in your Aerogarden. The larger the plants get, the bigger their root systems are inside! This means it will continue to be harder and harder to remove and transplant the whole plant keeping the roots in tact and unharmed, the larger it all gets. Some vegetable plants like zucchini and cucumber don’t like when their roots get damaged. So generally, for most vegetables, it’s a good idea to plan on transplanting veggie seedlings after 2-4 weeks of growth in the Aerogarden.

#3 Micro Dwarf Tomatoes

Micro dwarf tomato plants are one of our FAVORITE plants to grow both indoors and outside! There are more and more of these mini varieties all the time, and it’s lots of fun to try them all out.

The Aerogarden system makes growing ANY tomato variety from seed super easy, but if it’s not a mini variety, after a few weeks it will need to be transplanted to a larger container or to an outdoor location.

Fun fact: there are over 10,000 varieties of tomatoes with more being introduced all the time! It’s possible to find most any size, color and shape of tomato plant that can grow in most any type of garden!

Micro dwarf tomato varieties are the smallest type of tomato plants, but they can still grow larger than what an Aerogarden can support. Plan to transplant most of them to a 6″ (or larger) container when they reach about 6-7 inches tall. Much taller than 6 inches and the roots can potentially become too big to take out of the system without causing too much root damage. Small cherry tomatoes will begin to grow and ripen in around 60-70 days.

Some micro dwarf tomato varieties to grow in your Aerogarden:

Micro Tom Cherry Tomato (grows to about 7-8″ tall indoors)
Birdie Rouge Cherry Tomato (grows up to about 10″ tall indoors)
Pinnochio Orange Cherry Tomato (grows to about 10″ tall indoors)

#4 Dwarf Peppers

Dwarf pepper varieties vary in size from the shortest growing to about 7″ tall indoors (outdoors it will grow taller) to about 24″. For this reason, it’s a good idea to plan to transplant them to a container or outside when their leaves grow too tall and start bunching up against the grow light (the leaves will burn and the root systems will be very large inside the system).

It’s still well worth growing peppers in the Aerogarden but if you don’t want to transplant them to a container or outdoors, stick to the smallest dwarf varieties.

Prairie Fire (grows to about 8″ tall, super spicy multi-colored peppers)
Masquerade Ornamental (grows to about 12-18″ tall, hot multi-colored peppers)
Fish (grows to about 12-18″ tall, hot green to red peppers)

#5 Salad Greens

Most leafy greens (salad greens) will grow easily in an Aerogarden system, and quickly! Regular tried and true varieties of greens work well, but there are also fun dwarf varieties that are also fun to grow (and delicious too)!

Arugula
Winter Lettuce
Chives
Little Gem Romaine
Extra Dwarf Bok Choy
Red and Green Leaf