iDOO Hydroponics Growing System Kit 12Pods, Indoor Herb Garden System, with LED Grow Light, Built-in Fan, Auto-Timer, Adjustable Height Up to 11.3", for Home School, for Women Mom, for Christmas Gifts

A little noisy, but you can schedule the pump and lights as needed. Easy to assemble and use. No complaints.

Seriously?!? Can it get any simpler than the iDOO 12 pod indoor hydroponic herb garden?!? I had the whole thing up, planted and running in maybe an hour... My arugula sprouted in 1½ days and I woke up this morning (day 3) and the four different basils are just beginning to sprout. So... I just ordered my second iDOO from Amazon. Excellent product. Insanely easy. Very cool (literally and figuratively) using only a 23W LED panel. I highly recommend this hydroponic garden! Update 4/7/21: It's been 6 weeks since I began my adventures in hydroponics with the iDOO 12 pod indoor... and I've been extremely pleased with the results and I added two current pictures. I began by planting all 24 pods (I have 2 units) - the blank spots in the pictures are plants I've already transplanted. All of those transplants were successful but for one. I had Thai basil next to lemon basil. They had both grown so fast and so bushy that I had to transplant them; however, their respective root balls had grown so incredibly tangled that I was unable to tease them apart (at least without likely causing serious damage.) I finally decided to pick a spot midway between then and used scissors to cut straight across. End result- lemon basil thriving but the Thai basil is lingering on life support (that, in and of itself, is a good sign since today is day 3.) Additional thought: an earlier reviewer mentioned how fast basil sucks up the water. My experience is the same. I started with sweet, Thai, lemon, purple and cinnamon basil varieties and I was having to add 1 liter (between 2 units) every other day. The burn rate I experienced was just over 5 weeks to use all of the part A & B nutrients supplied in the kit so for a single unit, figure about 11 weeks. I've started the second unit's nutrients as of this posting. I've looked all over Amazon for more iDOO parts A & B nutrients and all I can find is a kit with the nutrient + sponges + baskets + covers (the latter two being non-consumables, so kind of an underhanded way to inflate the price if you ask me.) I'm intending on buying an "off-brand" variety of hydroponic nutrients from the many offered on Amazon and I'll update with my results. I figure if iDOO doesn't want to make $ selling individual consumables (if I'm not changing out a plant, I don't even need additional sponges but a plant's gotta eat, right?) then I'll go with an alternate source. (iDOO, you listening?) Other than non-support wrt the nutrient solutions ( I expect this will be of little consequence due to all the alternate sources on Amazon) I still rate this product 5 stars. The project has been fun and I'm amazed at how quickly some plants grew on a day-by-day basis! I've had no problems with the lights or pump on either unit. The timers have both been creeping forward (~20 minutes in 6 weeks being the worse between them.) It's been fun, basically automated with minimal user support-what's not to love? After all that, I forgot to add the biggest plus-an absolutely incredible constant variety of fresh herbs. I'll never go back to dried herbs because I've discovered that fresh tastes so much better! One word of caution: don't eat an entire sage leaf-WOW a little goes a long way. I like sampling all the basil varieties by eating a leaf off the plant to contrast and compare against each other so I thought I'd try that with the sage. I won't do that again.

very good unit to start with,

I have never indoor gardened before and i have not even out door gardened much. I live in an apartment and this seemed like a neat way to get a little taste. Hydro is a lot different then soil but properly maintained i believe it is a much easier solution to plants then dirt. You do have to learn a bit about PH and EC in your water. after that it's much better then soil because you don't have to worry about over or under watering in hydro. As for this device! I have been growing plants in it for 36 days only. I was a little skeptical but it actually works very well. Especially for lettuce or low growing crops. The kale i had wanted to grow way too tall so i had to keep trimming the stalks even though it was a "dwarf" variety. The peppers are starting to flower already. I could stop them but i will let them go. The issues with the device for me are these. The holes are too close together. there might be 12 spots for plants but unless you are growing micro greens you can only realistically keep 4ish full grown plants in there otherwise they would be way too cramped. As you can see in my picture it is pretty cramped and i have 7 plants in there. The height of the LED lamp only goes so high. meaning if you want tall bushy pepper plants this device is obviously not it. This last one is a small issue but i wanted to be able to grow the plants with out using the stickers included but after doing some tests with and without stickers it seems the stickers are pretty important for a couple reasons. being mold and plant stem support. a long with that i found the plants i didn't use the sticker with were more likely to stem split and they all have white mildew on top of the plugs All in all if you are growing some lettuce for some turtles like me or maybe some short pepper plants. This device will do it. Plants i have grown in here and some i transplanted out are. Three varieties of pepper, leaf lettuce, dwarf kale, catmint, marigold, zinnia, lizzies. no plant has died being in the hydro device

I got this for Christmas; my wife bought it through our shared Amazon account so I'm hoping this review will show up as a verified purchase. I seeded 6 pods on 29 December 2022, four with kale and two with lettuce. Those are the plants you can see growing so abundantly in the photo taken on 21 January 2023. I seeded the other six pods on 13 January 2023, three with arugula, two with cilantro, and one with basil. The arugula are up and looking fine, though still small. The basil is just peeking up now. The cilantro has yet to raise its head. Here are my thoughts: The unit was very easy to set up. I found the instructions to be quite clear. Seeding the sponges and putting the sponges in the baskets was straightforward. The only problem I had was the instructions to put only 3 or 4 seeds per sponge. Most of the seeds I'm working with are so tiny that the best I can do is shake the packet over the sponge and hope that the right number fall into the hole. I ended up overseeding most of the pods, meaning I had to do some serious thinning once the plants were up. Because this will be my first crop and I'm still feeling my way, I have a few unresolved questions: My kale and lettuce look about ready to harvest now, even though they have only been growing for three weeks. Their seed packets say they take 40-50 days to harvest when planted in soil. Do they really grow that much faster in a hydroponics unit? Should I start harvesting now, or wait some more? As you top off the water, which has to be done fairly often as the plants grow, you have to add more of the nutrients that come with the kit. When you replace all of the water in the tank, which the instructions say should be done a week or so after the plants have been growing awhile, you also have to add nutrients. I can see that if I want to have ongoing crops throughout the year, I will have to be buying more nutrients, which aren't particularly cheap. So my question is: Will this be a cost-effective way to have fresh greens for my table, vs. buying at the supermarket, or merely a fun (and potentially expensive) hobby? In summary: I'm quite pleased with IDOO unit itself. However, I'm unsure whether or not in the long run hydroponics will be a cost-effective way of growing food.

I had this unit for over a year now and it still works great. I mostly grow lettuce now but I tried growing everything, tomatoes, herbs like dill, chives, basil, etc. I love seeing the growth from week to week. You just have to remember as your produce gets bigger the more water it uses so remember to fill it up. I have been meticulous with cleaning the water pump/motor in between uses to make sure it's not covered in those pesky white roots. I have now bought this unit two more times, one for my sister and one for a white elephant gift exchange.

Packaging: compactly packed, easy to assemble and set up Product: while only time will tell if the product materials are truly of good quality, upon acquisition there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the plastic parts, the metal rod and the lights. So far my only complaint is that the power cord is too short. It's ~45 inches, and for me to put it where I had intended, I'll need to get a cord extender. Instructions: the user manual was actually pretty easy to follow (minor typos, no big deal) - probably the most confusing line of instruction would be that you should "split the sponge to take one seedling out and move it to other pot" so you only have one seedling (once germinated) per pod. I'll have to wait and see how this works out. The manual mentions that there are refill pods and baskets available for purchase, but doesn't actually include a link. I think it'd be really helpful for the system to come with some recommendations for what plants ARE good for hydrophonic systems. I've obviously Googled a lot and tried to do my research, but it'd be a nice touch from the manufacturer to include such tips. So excited to see what happens next though with the little pods I popped seeds into! Update: It's probably been 1.5-2 months, and I've raised the lamp for the first time. Herbs and lettuces and kales are growing super well in this! Sometimes the fan is louder than usual, but aside from that, no sign of structure problems. The only thing to note: once your plants are beyond the seedling stage, they can suck up quite a bit of water. The baskets are too shallow, in my opinion, and even if you're at 3.5L, the baskets won't touch water - which means if you have any seeds germinating, they're actually going dry. Something to look out for! I've never changed the water, but you do have to be vigilant about refilling it constantly. Once the roots grow, it's less of a concern, but water consumption is high! Update 2: Changed water for the first time. Roots get entangled with each other, which makes for a pretty awkward operation. There's visible fungi/mold growing on some of the substrate pods, and it seemed to kill off one of my stalks of basil (though the others are doing fine). Waiting to see if this issue might continue. I wish there were more information on how to deal with such situations.

First of all I was not paid or given free products to do this extensive comparison between the IDOO Hydroponics system and 3 other popular models. My only goal is to share information that can only be obtained by actually buying, owning, using and comparing the product. I was able to compare the iDOO Hydroponics Growing System Kit with 3 other popular hydroponic systems that I own. Keep in mind that this is the least expensive of the 4 so its obvious that there will be some takeaways. The other 3 models the IDOO was compared with side by side were: 12 Pods, Growell Smart Herb Garden AeroGarden Bounty Elite LetPot LPH-Max 21 Pods Hydroponics Pros: Easy Set Up During the comparison only the expensive aero garden had a quieter pump. The pump on the IDOO is impressively quiet. Better than dirt. Plants grew faster than if they were planted in dirt but the other 3 systems it was compared to had faster growth. The fastest growing plant was Basil. It was ready to use in 3 weeks. Lower price allows someone on a strict budget to get started in hydroponics. I had a light issue when I first set up the system and although customer service was through email only, they were responsive and helped solve the issue. Cons: You cant adjust the timer. When the Idoo is turned on it wont shut off by itself for 16 hours and turn back on in 8 hours. On the other brands I can set the time for on and off. For this reason I do not recommend the Idoo for the bedroom because the light timer can only be set by turning the unit off and back on. 22 watt light is lower compared to the 38 - 50 watt lights on compared models. I searched Amazon and I notice that most hydroponic systems in the price range of $40 to $70 have between 24 to 36 watt lights. 2 wires going up to light can be annoying and dont look that great. The more expensive units have internal wiring to eliminate that. The planting pods and the holes in the tray are smaller than the other brands I own so the plant plugs are not interchangeable with standard size. Height of light only goes up 11.3 inches while the other systems tested go approximately twice that. I would recommend this hydroponic system for beginners who want to plant herbs and short plants like lettuce but I would first shop other systems in the $40 and $50 range for hydroponic systems that are equivalent but with more powerful lights. I will be leaving reviews for the other 3 hydroponic systems I own in the future.