Easy Indoor Gardening with Auk Mini: My Experience

I have been thinking about growing vegetables for a while but never really committed to the idea. We have a lot of snails in our garden and the few vegetables we have planted have been eaten by the snails more often than not. Two years ago we managed to gets some courgettes which was nice. We had a steady supply of courgettes all summer and they tasted good. Last year we didn’t have any harvest to speak of. To experiment with the options in an easy to control environment I spent some cash and bought an Auk Mini indoor garden. It is expensive but according to their site it is super easy to grow herbs and small vegetables like cherry tomatoes and peppers. I had come across the product a few years ago but always found it expensive and I thought the testimonies about how easy it is to grow herbs in the Auk system were just marketing. About a month ago my Auk Mini arrived and I decided to test basil and parsley first. Assembling the Auk is easy (no tools required) and takes a few minutes. I followed the sowing instructions on the seed packets and after a few days first basil plants started to sprout. The parsley took longer and I thought at first that it failed but after a little over a week the parsley also started to grow and quickly caught up with the basil plants. We now have our own daily supply of basil and parsley in the kitchen and I can confirm that getting started with growing plants is as easy as the stories on the Auk site claim. In the course of the coming months I will find out if the plants last between several months to a year as is claimed. Looking at the Auk Mini up close I still find it an expensive kit and I am sure you can make your own DIY version for a fraction of the cost. I plan to make my own ugly looking version so that I can grow some hot peppers and cherry tomatoes in parallel to the basil and parsley. The nice thing about the Auk is that is that doesn’t require a lot of daily attention. You don’t water the soil but fill a tank underneath. This can last you for a week or two so if you need to travel you can fill up the tank before you leave without worrying that your plants will have shrivelled by the time you return.