Just Click And Grow
I’ve never been into gardening, nor had the urge to be. I’ve always thought, why bother? It looks like a whole load of unnecessary responsibility when I can just pop to Aldi and pick up anything that needs growing for less than a couple of quid.
But that all changed when I turned 31 and brought a tomato plant. I didn’t buy a tomato plant because I turned 31, that’s just the age I happened to be when I walked into Home Bargains and saw a hanging basket full of ripe tom toms for a fiver. After getting it home and naming it Tommy, I fell in love with it and the cute little fruit it gave me every day until it passed away (RIP Tommy). I was determined to keep his memory alive so asked a colleague of mine who actually grows fruit and veg (he has a legit allotment and brings me in cucumbers he‘s grown), how I can grow a new tomato plant from scratch. Following his advice, I’m happy to say that Tommy Jr is growing fast and strong on my balcony, seemingly loving life. He sits alongside a pot of Thyme (it’s huge), a pot of Rosemary (she’s not looking her best), and a pot of mint (almost all gone, thanks to all the lockdown mojitos I’ve been drinking). And that my friends, is as much as I’ll do. I like plants that are easy to grow, strong and resilient and that don’t die when I forget to water them for a week, because life is too short to worry about a plant getting enough water, when I myself am not.
When lockdown started I had grand visions of baking sourdough bread from scratch every morning, eating it for lunch with my own-grown tomatoes, lettuce, hand-spun mozzarella and a glass of homemade elderflower wine, in a house full of flowers I’d grown from seed. But I remembered I live in London, and have my pick of any big supermarket chain within a few minutes walk of my house, and they are all doing some great deals on Pinot Grigio right now. Plans out the window.
Then came a request from the team at work for people to review kitchen gadgets… There was an espresso machine, a slow cooker, something else, something else again, and a thing called a ‘Smart Garden’, which is basically a small indoor box that grows herbs, flowers and vegetables for you, and you have to do absolutely nothing. YES PLEASE.
Of course I opted to review it, and so enter Click and Grow and their ‘Smart Gardens’ that are designed to take care of watering, light and nutrients, to make it possible to grow plants 365 days a year in any household. There are three versions you can buy, Smart Garden 3 (€99.95) which is the small size and holds three pods, Smart Garden 9 (€199.95), which is much larger and holds nine pods, or if you’re really serious, you can go for Smart Garden 27, which is a multi-layered 27 pod super garden (€599.95) on a freestanding shelving unit. Each garden comes with a complimentary set of pods (lettuce, basil and tomatoes), and extra pods cost €9.95 for three.
You can choose from a vast range of flowers and vegetables, including dwarf peas, sweet bell peppers and moss roses. I chose to go with the nine pod version, for maximum potential of growing in the small space I have. The ‘garden’ arrived a few days after ordering, in a flatpack box, not unlike something Ikea would produce. The assembly was ridiculously simple, everything clicks into place, and the design is so sleek, it looks modern and cool, which in fact was the only slight problem I had with it, it looks out of place in my old country style kitchen, But hey ho, first world problems.
Once assembled, all you do is put the pods in the designated holes, fill the tank with water and switch it on (it needs to be plugged in, so best to put it near a socket). The light is on a timer cycle of 16 hours on and 8 hours off, and the cycle starts as soon as you plug it in, so plug it in in the morning, and the light goes off at night.
And that’s it! The garden does the rest, the lighting system recreates sunlight and the water in the tank is absorbed by the plants when they need it. It takes 1-2 weeks to start seeing shoots appear, and plants should be ready in 1-2 months, with varianing life spans of 2-6 months depending on the produce. In mine I’ve got lettuce, basil and tomato plants, which will make a great salad when they are all ready (maybe I should start making my own wine?!) .
Once set up, the lettuce shot up in no time, the basil soon followed but the tomato plants seemed to not want to be there and stayed away for a while (jealous of my big gorgeous Tommy Jr perhaps?!). Every morning would see a new sprout, or a bigger leaf, or a waft of basil as I walked in to the kitchen, and it was exciting to watch the little blighters come alive while I did fuck all.
There’s definitely something to be said about having a cute little box thing that you don’t need to think about but will one day give you fresh veggies, and if you’ve got zero outdoor space at home, then it means you get a little feeling of outdoors inside. Plus you get to feel smug as hell when you make a salad from all the things that have grown and put it on the ‘gram with the hashtags #HomeGrown #GreenFingers #Organic.
Another polus side of the Smart Garden is that it’s meant for life, everything is recyclable and it’s built to last. Once you are done with your plants, you simply buy more pods, and start the whole process again. So that initial price ends up being worth it for something that’s going to keep on giving
While I’m still going to continue to keep Tommy’s memory alive in the form of my plants outside, I like that the Smart Garden means I can grow things that would never last on my North London balcony, with my North London cat that pees on the things she doesn’t like and eats the things she does. So hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll be well on my way to living like a self sufficient smug bitch with a glass of homemade Pinot in my hand.