Fresh Green Salad Every Day! My Indoor Hydroponic Gardyn Review
I recently decided to get an indoor garden after seeing the Gardyn 4.0 on Instagram. I can’t believe how much I love it! I’ve been eating green salads from this garden almost every day.
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Oh my goodness you guys! I went from a complete outdoor failure of a gardener to the most successful harvest I’ve ever had in my entire 50 years of life!
I’m not going to bore you with the details, so, I’m going to just offer the benefits and the lessons from my Gardyn – an indoor hydroponic system. (This is my affiliate link for $50 off)
The Benefits of my Gardyn
- It’s so pretty!! Seriously, you’d be shocked at how many people walk past this garden tower and remark at how amazing it is. It gets lots of questions, and 100% of people who see it, want one of their own.
- Everything grows so fast! Truly. This haul of greens (plus more that is still on the tower of the herbs, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers) was just have 8 weeks of growth!
- It waters itself! All you have to do is keep the base full of water (it holds about 5 gallons), and the system will run water through the plants with the appropriate amount of water- not soaking them, and not letting them get too dry. This means you can go on vacation, and your plants will continue to get watered.
- The lighting system is automated. Based on the growing stage of your plants, the lights will generally come on for about 12-18 hours per day. And then, it shuts off automatically to give the plants darkness as well. At first, I kept the tower in my office (it doesn’t need to be near a window), and it was AMAZING for my mental health to have my office so bright. I’m a summer girl, and I need a lot of light, so this was actually so cool to me. Now, I’ve moved it into our kitchen because I use it so much, and it looks so pretty there. Anyway, one thing I learned from the Facebook/reddit groups was you don’t have to have their membership to keep the watering and lighting schedule. It will continue on it’s own, even without paying a monthly fee. (The monthly fee gets you more “helpful hints” and 2-3 new seed pods per week.
- I’ve been able to try new veggies. Ok. this is actually my PLAN to try all the new things! There are so many greens on this Gardyn that I’ve never heard of, (like Tatsoi) nor do I know how to cook with them. But, I’m determined to learn. The truth is, since my weight loss success, I’ve been binging on veggies. I love most of them, and I can eat a lot these days.
What I’ve learned in taking care of my Gardyn 4.0
I joined a Facebook group here, and a Reddit group here and followed the questions and answers for several weeks to gather all the best tips.
- I learned how to thin my sprouts! After you see the first sprouts, you are supposed to thin down to 1, 2, or 3 sprouts. Most of them are 1! Which is hard to do because you get nervous you’re going to take out the one that has the best chance of growth. LOL. But, I made myself a printable chart that I kept by the tower in the beginning, so I wouldn’t have to keep using the app to know how many sprouts to leave. I uploaded my chart here.
- Harvesting is easy. I got these little garden scissors, and I keep it by the Gardyn. I just cut around the outer leaves. I also cut out any ill looking leaves, or leaves that look like they aren’t thriving.
- I add 2 things to the water, every time I top off the base. For every gallon I add 1/2-1 tsp of veg-bloom that came with the system. And I also add 1/2-1 tsp of Cal-Mag.
- I bought these cheap pH test strips and I test my water to make sure it’s between 5.5 and 6.5ph. If it’s too high, I add phlo H Down+ from this hydroponic store here (it seemed to be the best product for the best price, according to the people in the community threads)
Will I save money at the grocery store? The Veggies that are Thriving
So, my big justification in spending so much money on this system was the money I potentially could save by not buying these veggies at the story. I even rationalized that the system could come out of my grocery budget! Lol.
I will say, when I purchase greens at the store, they go bad before I use it all. But with the greens I’m growing, I literally leave it attached to the root until I’m ready to eat with it. Not only does it not go bad, but they just get bigger and better.
So, while I modify the starter kit with veggies that I’ll truly eat every day, the ones I think I’ll keep and get more of are:
- The cherry tomatoes! These look promising. I’m so excited to have these. Just waiting for them to turn red!
- The cucumbers– also looking promising. Not sure when to harvest it, but I bet it’s soon.
- The cilantro! This is thriving! I’ve made cilantro dressing, and cilantro rice with this one.
- The Mint! My recent protein mint ice cream was with the mint from this garden
- The strawberries– I hope to be able to say these produce, but they haven’t yet. Still waiting.
- The peppers– these look promising on one of my plants. It has two big peppers. Still trying to figure out when the appropriate harvest is for that.
- The Dill– I don’t know what to make with this besides adding it to egg salad, but the dill Exploded! Seriously, lot’s of dill.
- All the basil’s have a huge harvest. I don’t need three kind of basil though, so I’ll probably only keep one of these.
- The Romaine– of all the lettuce’s, the romaine is my favorite! I may add a few more romaine plants, and remove some of the lesser known ones like green mustard and tatsoi.
- The swiss chard. This did well, but I took it out and tossed it. I don’t really know what to do with swiss chard and it was taking up a lot of space.
- The kale is doing well! I’ll keep the kale.
So, my plan is to create recipes for ALL the plants. So stay tuned for those. I created a category called “GARDYN” and I’ll add all my recipes to that category here.