The Allure and Challenges of Garden's Subscription Service

Garden's subscription service has been a game-changer for me, providing a steady supply of fresh greens every month. For roughly $30 a month, I receive 10 new seed pods, all non-GMO and sourced from the US. These pods come with instructions on how to grow them, and they're usually mailed to my doorstep. While it's convenient to have a constant supply of greens, there's also a significant learning curve involved in maintaining this system.

When you don't subscribe, you can order plants à la carte when you need them for $5 each. This option allows you to try new varieties or experiment with different types of greens without committing to a full subscription. However, the convenience of having plants delivered to your doorstep every month is hard to beat. I've found myself eagerly anticipating the arrival of my new plant pods and spending hours tending to them.

The First Batch: Trials and Tribulations

My first batch of plants was a baptism by fire. The seed pods arrived with instructions, but I didn't realize that some of them wouldn't grow. Instead, they produced something entirely different – like liver warts and algae. It was a surprise, to say the least. I quickly learned that some plants are more finicky than others, and you need to be prepared for unexpected results.

As my plants grew, I discovered another challenge: over-plucking them. I was excited to harvest fresh greens every day, but I didn't realize that the plants needed space to grow. This led to a situation where they became bunched up too tightly, causing them to become stressed and eventually producing unwanted growth. It was a humbling experience, to say the least.

The Kelby Support Team: A Lifeline

When my next batch of plants failed to thrive, I reached out to Kelby's support team for help. They offered some sage advice, including using natural fungicide sprays to address any issues and covering green algae with aluminum foil to prevent it from spreading. While these tips were helpful, I still managed to lose some plants. However, the Kelby team was understanding and offered to replace them – a valuable service that they provide to all customers who experience plant loss.

The Bitter End: Harvesting and Rotation

As my plants grew, I realized that some of them would eventually become too bitter or unpalatable for eating. This was a bittersweet moment – on the one hand, it meant that the plants had reached their full potential; on the other hand, it marked the end of an era. To avoid this problem, I started to rotate my plant pods more regularly, ensuring that only the younger, tastier greens were harvested.

In hindsight, I wish I had known about the rotation process from the start. With a steady supply of new seed pods every month, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of having fresh greens at your fingertips. However, this convenience comes with a price – you need to be mindful of the plants' needs and plan accordingly.

The Verdict: Worth It?

For me, Garden's subscription service has been worth the investment. While there are challenges involved, the convenience and variety it offers make it an attractive option for anyone looking to start or maintain a garden. Of course, it's not a magical do-nothing system – you still need to put in the effort to care for your plants and harvest them regularly.

That being said, I would recommend this service to anyone who wants to grow fresh greens without breaking their bank. While it may require some extra effort upfront, the rewards are well worth it. Just be prepared to learn as you go and adapt to any challenges that come your way.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit smells like pizza with basil i just grew all of this fresh organic produce in my kitchen in just a few weeks with a smart garden i didn't have to worry about water or sunlight i'm gonna tell you how it works and what it's really like to live with a five foot tall veggie growing machine because things got a bit out of hand it looks like it belongs in a space station science lab but behind me is the garden spelled with y and it grew a ton of fresh leafy greens and herbs i'm working on some new sprout leans now it's like having a farmer's market in my kitchen because at any time my family and i can get these super fresh greens to eat and i don't need to know squat about how to take care of plants you may have come across hydroponic devices like this popping up in different forms many are small that you can put on a countertop but nothing is quite like this for the indoors now i don't need to connect it to a water line i don't have a backyard and i don't need to put it near a window so this was really interesting to me the garden sells itself as an artificially intelligent system that monitors your plants it manages the water and the light it's vertical hydroponics that means you do not need soil here let me show you it starts like this with seeds already inside these little cubes that are sent to you it's not soil in here it's a soft material called rock wool and you pop them in cylinder pods and you can place these little cylinder pods anywhere around the garden now let me show you one that's already been growing a bit this is my tomato plant he's coming along pretty nicely now when it's growing the roots will reach out and drink up the water that is gathering in the bottom of the cylinder water is pumped from the bottom of the tank and that's where you're going to put in this powdered plant food it's full of minerals and nutrients that the plants need and in this system it's getting 20 hours of light a day from these two light poles but you can change the light if you want you can dim it or turn it off anytime you need and that's basically how you'll get monster plants that will swallow you up alive food machine more feed me that's right although that's not the full story after three months of living with it there is plenty i learned that they don't tell you right away and some surprises were just a little bit frightening to explain it best let us start at the beginning how does your garden grow the garden is delivered in a gigantic box for you to assemble the starter pack is the same for everyone you get this six gallon tank that takes up about two feet of floor space and the light systems are really delicate and a pain to snap together but for the most part it was basic you get these instructions to follow with videos to guide as you go i was sent a review sample from the company but the machine right now is on sale for about eight hundred dollars so yes that is the price of a computer but over time that cost is saving you trips to the produce aisle i have not needed to buy salad for months at a time where i don't want to go to the grocery store as often because shopping is stressful so this way eating fresh takes less work now when finished it stands five feet five inches tall and holds 30 plants the starter pack has an assortment of seed pods with herbs like mint and basil and cilantro and a bunch of lettuce varieties i'm not talking about the store-bought iceberg of romaine this is gourmet stuff rouge de ver berin matilda swiss chard butter tatsoya i had no clue what any of those were when i started either because i know nothing of plants but you scatter them throughout the garden putting them wherever you want so delightful you then connected to the wi-fi and an app and bam let there be light yes it's very bright the pump will trickle water down a few times a day on a cycle nice buy something growing in three days the little babies begin to sprout well maybe not all the babies kale in the center of my shot was not cooperating in fact none of my kale grew and i never liked kale so of course it would disappoint me but actually a few seeds were not sprouting the app would give me words of encouragement like hey good going on the growth so far and don't worry some just take a little longer how did it know because there are cameras yes that is what makes this garden unique there is a smart assistant program they call it kelby it sends alerts for some basic scheduled upkeep it encourages you on progress warns you when something looks off and it can see your garden because two cameras are on the light poles there is no video or audio being recorded these take still photos every 30 minutes it seems a bit much but if you need hand holding a human on the support team can see your photo history of progress now most of my help was automated by the computer it is not always clear how much a human is checking in one time it told me a plant was looking wilty to check on it if it was getting enough water i made some adjustments and it perked right up the company is trying to balance something that gives people an option to get a live checkup if they want it where you can email your questions to experts for bigger problems but kelby itself is not going to poke at you too much so customers can just be left alone to do their own thing my kelping tips were pretty good they popped up once in a while to remind me to put more water or food in the tank but funny thing is i wish it did nag me more because i'm not the kind of person who goes out of my way to reach out with questions instead i had to learn some things the hard way check the free a fresh feast in just one month we were eating the best salads of our lives now i didn't really know the best way to harvest leaves at first app suggestions are written pretty loosely but i learned that you just cut or pluck the leaves from the outside in and you just gotta eyeball not to take too much i enjoyed getting my kids involved in it perhaps the greatest value here was getting kids to think salad is fun even the baby was into it well sort of in that first month i was living it up throwing greens on anything basil in the sauce basil on the pasta basil on the hamburgers i don't know what to do with all this basil okay it's a lot look at the mint mmm just add a little salsa and oh you got some classy mint infused fizzy water i never ate so fresh and with a month gone by the system told me to order 10 more plants that's because garden has a subscription service it costs roughly 30 a month and with that you're getting 10 new seed pods every month all non-gmo and from the us and they get mailed to you if you do not subscribe you could just order a la carte on your own when you want some for five dollars a pop when you get a new batch in the mail they come with instructions you put them in a container add a little water wait a week or so and once they sprout then they can be inserted into the garden you can also order blank pods if you feel adventurous because you can use your own seeds to grow whatever you want now it's time to put the new plants in and take out the garbage some plants just never grew goodbye losers instead of growing food you grew some questionable fuzz and algae and liver warts ugh yeah random spore creatures not welcome in my house as it turns out when the seeds didn't grow the pod kept getting water with nutrients and well life finds a way to grow something if you think that was bad there was actually something worse lurking in my garden so at about week six my plants were looking crazy huge but that's because i didn't want to over pluck them at first i'm thinking hey i want to keep my plants alive as long as possible i want salad so i'll just eat a little here and there turns out that was a bad move what i didn't realize was the plants were getting bunched up too tight by over growing i wasn't harvesting them fast enough don't judge me so that's when i discovered brace yourself new life forms growing inside oh yeah that is not how you win friends with salad no no no no no no so i chopped all that nastiness off goodbye gross also kind of sad but not all was lost i harvested the heck out of everything that was still good you could say it was a bit of a snack at this point i'm learning all the maintenance that's needed you have to clean the tank every month or so it's not hard it just requires you to pop off the top clean out the inside add fresh water with plant food and you gotta check on your plant roots because they need trimming i did not expect them to travel down the pipes they are such aggressive little beast plants it was normal and it's easy to take care of but some problems were a little harder to solve as my next batch is growing i see them looking questionable again this time i messaged the kelby support to see if there was something i could do they suggested to just buy a little natural fungicide spray for some of the growth and to cover the green algae with aluminum foil to stop it poor tomatoes i mean not all of the plants wilted but maybe some of them were just too young to handle the spray or maybe i did something wrong the kelby team was nice they offered to replace the plants that didn't make it something that they offer to everyone if this happens some lessons you just have to learn the hard way and i still had one more major lesson to go the bitter end there comes a time in every plant's life where it'll get really big and then grow buds and flowers and at that point it's no good to eat because it changes the taste of the leaves and it gets bitter let me show you my mint beast mint check this out it's not good with this crazy root i got no warning from kelby just tell me what to do you don't want to read an app i kept these flowering plants around for the video but i'm going to toss them and start the story again with new plants this time i got more tasty leafy greens and that's really a tip i wish garden told me from the start if i knew that these plants were only going to be good for like three months and i'm getting a supply of 10 plants a month i'm going to plan to always have a constant rotation with different life stages only growing the stuff i really love and that way i'll have a supply at all times do you need the subscription service well for the simplicity of getting more cubes and seeds without thinking too much about it yes i do like it especially in the beginning but remember this is not some magical do nothing and get instant salad machine as much as i wanted it to be you've got to maintain it maybe study a little bit on the plants and you have to eat your greens often i should mention the garden is not just for food you can order flowers but why are you paying all this money for flowers this is a food machine as far as i'm concerned go petunia somewhere else three months in i think i finally got the hang of how to garden with the garden it feels easy and these days easy is good yes i got it show me okay you want to eat it no well we got it yeahit smells like pizza with basil i just grew all of this fresh organic produce in my kitchen in just a few weeks with a smart garden i didn't have to worry about water or sunlight i'm gonna tell you how it works and what it's really like to live with a five foot tall veggie growing machine because things got a bit out of hand it looks like it belongs in a space station science lab but behind me is the garden spelled with y and it grew a ton of fresh leafy greens and herbs i'm working on some new sprout leans now it's like having a farmer's market in my kitchen because at any time my family and i can get these super fresh greens to eat and i don't need to know squat about how to take care of plants you may have come across hydroponic devices like this popping up in different forms many are small that you can put on a countertop but nothing is quite like this for the indoors now i don't need to connect it to a water line i don't have a backyard and i don't need to put it near a window so this was really interesting to me the garden sells itself as an artificially intelligent system that monitors your plants it manages the water and the light it's vertical hydroponics that means you do not need soil here let me show you it starts like this with seeds already inside these little cubes that are sent to you it's not soil in here it's a soft material called rock wool and you pop them in cylinder pods and you can place these little cylinder pods anywhere around the garden now let me show you one that's already been growing a bit this is my tomato plant he's coming along pretty nicely now when it's growing the roots will reach out and drink up the water that is gathering in the bottom of the cylinder water is pumped from the bottom of the tank and that's where you're going to put in this powdered plant food it's full of minerals and nutrients that the plants need and in this system it's getting 20 hours of light a day from these two light poles but you can change the light if you want you can dim it or turn it off anytime you need and that's basically how you'll get monster plants that will swallow you up alive food machine more feed me that's right although that's not the full story after three months of living with it there is plenty i learned that they don't tell you right away and some surprises were just a little bit frightening to explain it best let us start at the beginning how does your garden grow the garden is delivered in a gigantic box for you to assemble the starter pack is the same for everyone you get this six gallon tank that takes up about two feet of floor space and the light systems are really delicate and a pain to snap together but for the most part it was basic you get these instructions to follow with videos to guide as you go i was sent a review sample from the company but the machine right now is on sale for about eight hundred dollars so yes that is the price of a computer but over time that cost is saving you trips to the produce aisle i have not needed to buy salad for months at a time where i don't want to go to the grocery store as often because shopping is stressful so this way eating fresh takes less work now when finished it stands five feet five inches tall and holds 30 plants the starter pack has an assortment of seed pods with herbs like mint and basil and cilantro and a bunch of lettuce varieties i'm not talking about the store-bought iceberg of romaine this is gourmet stuff rouge de ver berin matilda swiss chard butter tatsoya i had no clue what any of those were when i started either because i know nothing of plants but you scatter them throughout the garden putting them wherever you want so delightful you then connected to the wi-fi and an app and bam let there be light yes it's very bright the pump will trickle water down a few times a day on a cycle nice buy something growing in three days the little babies begin to sprout well maybe not all the babies kale in the center of my shot was not cooperating in fact none of my kale grew and i never liked kale so of course it would disappoint me but actually a few seeds were not sprouting the app would give me words of encouragement like hey good going on the growth so far and don't worry some just take a little longer how did it know because there are cameras yes that is what makes this garden unique there is a smart assistant program they call it kelby it sends alerts for some basic scheduled upkeep it encourages you on progress warns you when something looks off and it can see your garden because two cameras are on the light poles there is no video or audio being recorded these take still photos every 30 minutes it seems a bit much but if you need hand holding a human on the support team can see your photo history of progress now most of my help was automated by the computer it is not always clear how much a human is checking in one time it told me a plant was looking wilty to check on it if it was getting enough water i made some adjustments and it perked right up the company is trying to balance something that gives people an option to get a live checkup if they want it where you can email your questions to experts for bigger problems but kelby itself is not going to poke at you too much so customers can just be left alone to do their own thing my kelping tips were pretty good they popped up once in a while to remind me to put more water or food in the tank but funny thing is i wish it did nag me more because i'm not the kind of person who goes out of my way to reach out with questions instead i had to learn some things the hard way check the free a fresh feast in just one month we were eating the best salads of our lives now i didn't really know the best way to harvest leaves at first app suggestions are written pretty loosely but i learned that you just cut or pluck the leaves from the outside in and you just gotta eyeball not to take too much i enjoyed getting my kids involved in it perhaps the greatest value here was getting kids to think salad is fun even the baby was into it well sort of in that first month i was living it up throwing greens on anything basil in the sauce basil on the pasta basil on the hamburgers i don't know what to do with all this basil okay it's a lot look at the mint mmm just add a little salsa and oh you got some classy mint infused fizzy water i never ate so fresh and with a month gone by the system told me to order 10 more plants that's because garden has a subscription service it costs roughly 30 a month and with that you're getting 10 new seed pods every month all non-gmo and from the us and they get mailed to you if you do not subscribe you could just order a la carte on your own when you want some for five dollars a pop when you get a new batch in the mail they come with instructions you put them in a container add a little water wait a week or so and once they sprout then they can be inserted into the garden you can also order blank pods if you feel adventurous because you can use your own seeds to grow whatever you want now it's time to put the new plants in and take out the garbage some plants just never grew goodbye losers instead of growing food you grew some questionable fuzz and algae and liver warts ugh yeah random spore creatures not welcome in my house as it turns out when the seeds didn't grow the pod kept getting water with nutrients and well life finds a way to grow something if you think that was bad there was actually something worse lurking in my garden so at about week six my plants were looking crazy huge but that's because i didn't want to over pluck them at first i'm thinking hey i want to keep my plants alive as long as possible i want salad so i'll just eat a little here and there turns out that was a bad move what i didn't realize was the plants were getting bunched up too tight by over growing i wasn't harvesting them fast enough don't judge me so that's when i discovered brace yourself new life forms growing inside oh yeah that is not how you win friends with salad no no no no no no so i chopped all that nastiness off goodbye gross also kind of sad but not all was lost i harvested the heck out of everything that was still good you could say it was a bit of a snack at this point i'm learning all the maintenance that's needed you have to clean the tank every month or so it's not hard it just requires you to pop off the top clean out the inside add fresh water with plant food and you gotta check on your plant roots because they need trimming i did not expect them to travel down the pipes they are such aggressive little beast plants it was normal and it's easy to take care of but some problems were a little harder to solve as my next batch is growing i see them looking questionable again this time i messaged the kelby support to see if there was something i could do they suggested to just buy a little natural fungicide spray for some of the growth and to cover the green algae with aluminum foil to stop it poor tomatoes i mean not all of the plants wilted but maybe some of them were just too young to handle the spray or maybe i did something wrong the kelby team was nice they offered to replace the plants that didn't make it something that they offer to everyone if this happens some lessons you just have to learn the hard way and i still had one more major lesson to go the bitter end there comes a time in every plant's life where it'll get really big and then grow buds and flowers and at that point it's no good to eat because it changes the taste of the leaves and it gets bitter let me show you my mint beast mint check this out it's not good with this crazy root i got no warning from kelby just tell me what to do you don't want to read an app i kept these flowering plants around for the video but i'm going to toss them and start the story again with new plants this time i got more tasty leafy greens and that's really a tip i wish garden told me from the start if i knew that these plants were only going to be good for like three months and i'm getting a supply of 10 plants a month i'm going to plan to always have a constant rotation with different life stages only growing the stuff i really love and that way i'll have a supply at all times do you need the subscription service well for the simplicity of getting more cubes and seeds without thinking too much about it yes i do like it especially in the beginning but remember this is not some magical do nothing and get instant salad machine as much as i wanted it to be you've got to maintain it maybe study a little bit on the plants and you have to eat your greens often i should mention the garden is not just for food you can order flowers but why are you paying all this money for flowers this is a food machine as far as i'm concerned go petunia somewhere else three months in i think i finally got the hang of how to garden with the garden it feels easy and these days easy is good yes i got it show me okay you want to eat it no well we got it yeah\n"