Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

New to the whole aerogarden thing, spent a week reading all the reviews, looking at the specs and sizes of each of the units, watched a dozen or so you tube videos and decided that the bounty might be a good fit for our family. I do all the cooking in our family and we each dinner together every night of the week and rarely go out or get take out. So the thought of having fresh lettuces and spices growing in my kitchen appealed to me. I also think my daughters 6 and almost 2 years old would enjoy watching them grow. So once I decided to finally purchase one was upset that We are a Prime member although Amazon said it would be a 4-5 day prime delivery, so I was glad when it was delivered in 2 days. Purchased as am Amazon warehouse deal at a great price, less than most of the smaller units. Went together in less than 5 minutes, seems like the construction is decent, telescoping aluminum pole for the light built much like a camera tripod. The touch screen on the front works nicely and has a lot of info about setting up and allows for custom settings with the lights and pump. Has a clock built in, after you pick a pre made program, in my case I picked lettuce garden, tells me that it's running that program on the screen, how many days in, tells about water level and count down for adding more nutrients. My first impression with the aerogarden itself is good. I purchased a pack of 9 salad greens pods because I want to grow mostly lettuce but included two basil pants and a dill plant in my first setup. After I got the aerogarden setup and three of the pods that came with the herb kit planted I went to plant the lettuces and there is 9 pods, only 6 domes! So my first impression of the quality control of whoever packs the pods is not so good. I had the extra domes from the herbs so it wasn't a problem. But to pay $20 for 9 lettuce plants and then to be missing pieces kind of made me mad. I think the pods are way over priced. I will update this review in about a week or two after my plants start to germinate. Update 2/19 - 1 week in.. 8 out of 9 plants have germinated and are growing nicely. I planted 7 pods from the Salad greens kit I ordered and 2 Genovese Basil that came with the Garden. Most of the salad by afternoon of day two was already noticeably growing and now at 1 week is already about 1" tall. The basil says its a 6 day germination but at day 4 already had a sprout and now at day 7 is about half inch tall already. The one Basil pod shows no life yet, but will give it till the end of its "germination" period which I think is 21 days before I loose hope and move onto something else. So far I have followed the directions and haven't done anything different to the program. The next cycle of plants I grow I might add air stones or run the pump longer cycles, but seeing as this is my first time using an Aerogarden, no experimentation yet! My 6 year old daughter runs over to the garden every morning and night after school to check on the plants, it is fun to see how quickly they grow! 1 month in 3/14/16 The last couple of weeks I have harvested from my 5 salad pods about 5 large side salads worth per week. So for me, my wife, and 6 yo daughter we've been able to each have two salads per week. I also have more dill than I can use right now from the one pod of dill I planted. I planted two pods of basil one is still very small with about 4-5 leaves and hardly any roots, the other has about 20 leaves and extensive roots. One salad pod I planted never developed anything and I will have to contact aerogarden and see how their warranty program works. I have some other plants sitting on my counter soaking up some of the residual excess light and they seem to be doing well. It amazes me how fast everything grows, very noticeable difference from morning to night. The photo I uploaded is from week 3 after I harvested a bag of lettuce and reduced the plants by almost half.