First Time For This

Hi, joe645!
It sounds like your pump may not be working. Is it plugged in? Have you tried the "Test Pump" button on the AG?

Alternatively, is your AG located under a heating vent, or in a draft? Is your room temperature or water temperature above 70 degrees?

joe645, the AG pods come in a retail box that has a "sell by" date on it. I think that AG guarantees germination for a year after that date. My AG pods have still germinated as much as two years after the date.

If you purchased the pods recently, you can contact Aerogarden and they will send you replacement pods.

If the plants have leaves, then it is something about the growing conditions that is affecting them. Are the developing roots healthy (white or light brown)?

Did you clean and disinfect the AG bowl after your last crop?

You might try a "rinse and refill" right now. My tomatoes do well when I do a rinse and refill every two weeks, starting at week six.

Has anything changed about your water?

The plants have been in the Aero Garden for 24 days now and have not grown past the covers on the pods. Two of them have started roots (white). I had cleaned the unit since the last planting. My water comes from home tap which is conditioned water.  I have grown such pods at least 4 times sucessfully before and never had to actually change the water. I forgot to look at the date stamp on the box before discarding.

im running into this issue with the peppers i just bought, coming up on day 20 and not even a little sproutling! about to write aerogarden and see what the next step i need to take is...

Glad to hear that, joe645!

Are you growing the Heirloom Red cherry tomato or the Golden Harvest cherry tomato variety?  I’m growing two Golden Harvest cherry tomatoes in a Bounty unit. Both have dense growth but one of them is noticeably more matted and lots of the blooms are hidden under the foliage. A little careful pruning has helped.  

Thanks for the pruning tips, lynnee , it's really helpful.  I've grown indeterminate heirloom, dwarf, and cherry tomatoes outdoors, but growing these micro dwarf tomatoes indoors is definitely a learning experience.  A lot of fun but also different.  

Thanks for the link lynnee .  I had read the Aerogarden article once upon a time but needed to refresh my memory.  Your photos helped me understand how to cut the growing tip.  As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.  

joe645, you can always terminate a garden that isn't doing well, but a garden like that is also an opportunity for practicing pruning or for experimenting with supplements! If the room temperature is off, too cold or too hot, my AG tomatoes will sometimes grow smaller and with a thicker canopy.

Anyway, with "bouquet" tomatoes, I'd try clearing the middle branches to improve air circulation, and then see what they do. Also, you can raise the lights to at least 5" above the canopy, if you haven't already. That will encourage the plants to stretch up and grow taller. If you prune so that the bloom clusters are sticking out above the canopy, the plants will usually cover them up with a new canopy in a week or so.

Your tomato plants in the photo look fairly normal, so the batch may just be somewhat slow. I don't bother pollinating my tomatoes, but I do add 5mg of CalMag and 3mg of Koolbloom to the Bounty bowl (a bit more than 1 gallon of water), along with the standard AG nutrients, at each R&R at 4 or 6 weeks and every 2 weeks thereafter.

I had a Veranda Red in a location it didn't like, and it finally started growing well after I moved it to a cooler, more draft-free location. It probably took 3 months to begin producing fruit, and then it produced many, many tomatoes over a period of several months.