New garden room with eight AeroGarden Farm herb, tomato, and pepper gardens

Summer has hit Carlsbad!! It was 106 in my back yard yesterday. It gets slightly hotter out there than the actual temp, because of all the rock and concrete. But my car said 104 around noon when I went to help out a crew, so it was still pretty hot!! The AC in the house seems to work better than the last one. It would run pretty much 12 hours a day anytime it got over 90 to keep my house at 75 with the thermostat set to 73, it NEVER kept up until it cooled off at night. Here I can actually set it to 75 and it only had to run about 6 hours to maintain that temp indoors. The Shiso plant has some impressively huge leaves!! Basil is shooting up, and the sorrel and majoram are doing good so far: The dill is getting bigger! Parsley sprout died on me though. Sage and rosemary still going strong! The Billy Biker and Mucho Nachos are both up! They both look like this so didn't bother with 2 photos lol: Hot banana looks good!! I think my tomato got a little too hot. The leaves dried out!! The pump is still working fine and the bottom is full of water, so not sure. I had been keeping the door shut to keep the dogs out of the gardens, and it got HOT in there - felt like 80 when I opened the door, which may be why I lost the parsley as well. I've decided to keep that door open from now on and just put a little doggy fence across the opening to keep them out. We'll see if the tomato bounces back!

Gardens are making great progress!! Fed them a day late, because Work Happened yesterday and I forgot lol. But I've been a week late before on full-grown plants with no consequences, these guys won't be bothered by it! Shiso is looking great! The red never did come up. I went ahead and thinned after snapping this photo, but didn't transplant any of the seedlings I pulled out. I want to make sure I actually like the flavor before I go too wild growing it. Pulled the pod that the red seeds were in and moved this guy to the middle. 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Dill also got thinned today!! I already know those are absolute monster plants that I only have very occasional use for, so didn't bother transplanting here either: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Basil got thinned too! Also a monster plant that I can barely keep up with most of the time, didn't transplant: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr I have no idea what sorrel tastes like, so same story here as with the shiso. Thinned, didn't transplant: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr My baby sage plant is doing well: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr And so is the rosemary! 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Parsley decided to grow after all 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Majoram seems like it's struggling a bit. My oregano died on me, possibly because of algae. I swabbed the top of this pod with peroxide after photos, maybe I can save the seedling: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr I love how baby pepper plants are like¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr The tomato's kind of doing it too lol: 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Ended some things that didn't sprout (cilantro, lavender, savory, thyme, and oregano that died) and shuffled others around to get 2 machines free. Planted two jalapeno varieties: Billy Biker and Muchos Nachos!! I want ALL the poppers!!! Bonus pic of Flower doing her best "dead dog" impression. She sleeps with her eyes open, which makes it that much more convincing 05/12/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr ...just realized I need to attack the couch with a lint roller

So far I'm on track for weekly updates - maybe it seems weird, since I'm only on week 2 here, but I'm on cloud 9 at the thought of being able to garden and give weekly updates again. It feels good to be unpacked and on a regular schedule. I'm super proud of the work I've gotten done over the past couple of months setting up house and may post photos at some point to brag a little lol. I did end up replacing the wood shelves with the metal ones in the plant room!! Wish I'd thought of it BEFORE everything was full of water - this exercise reminded me of one of the many reasons I hate carpet - it's hard to scoot things!!! But it does look nice, and my garage is better off for it. Plant room 2.0: 05/05/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr The side of the garage the shelves landed on - waaaay back when I first made these, they were much taller. I took the tops off when I bought a bunch of the tall farms because they didn't fit and put the tops in the garage for storage. Now the shelves are fully reassembled again: 05/05/2025 by Masked Sonnet, on Flickr Once I get that ladder back to my parents, who loaned it to me to hang photos in my obnoxiously tall-ceiling-ed living room, I think I'll be fully satisfied with my setup out there. On to the plants!! The green shiso has 3 sprouts, while the red has none. I'll give the red another week and then probably attempt to transplant once of the green sprouts over there. They will need thinning, regardless. From what I've read since planting I may not even want to transplant, apparently these are very vigorous plants. The dill is up and the thyme has a teensy little sprout, but no action from the savory yet: Sage is looking good and the rosemary has a teensy little sprout as well. I'm always excited when rosemary does that, because it's so hit and miss for me. No action at all from the cilantro or parsley Majoram is up but not enough to get a photo, no action from the lavender Basil, oregano, and sorrel are all up: Hot banana pepper is up And the tomato is up!! Since I have cilantro and parsley planted in the outdoor garden, I'll give those another week and then probably swap them out with a jalapeno experiment if they don't come up! I did a little searching for popper-worthy jalapenos and have a couple of new varieties coming my way soon.

Absolutely THRILLED to say I've starting Aerogardening again!! It's been a while!! Got fully moved into the house, finished most of the outdoor stuff I wanted to get done before it got too hot, and FINALLY got the correct sized faucet-to-garden hose adapter so I don't have the haul the farm bases around to fill them (this took an embarrassing number of tries). Back in business!! I planted Farms only, but it's still 8 gardens going at the same time. We have: Farm 1: Dwarf Banana Toes Tomato Farm 2: Mexican Sunset Hot Banana Pepper Farm 3: Cilantro and Parsley Farm 4: Lavender and Majoram Farm 5: Sage and Rosemary Farm 6: Basil, Oregano, and Sorrel Farm 7: Winter Savory, Thyme, and Dill Farm 8: Green and Red Shiso (pardon the finger in both photos, I just noticed that ) As for the previous stuff I was growing at my parents' house while moving - the dwarf pixie tomato was a huge disappointment. Made a huge, beautiful plant and nice, palm-sized tomatoes that were very pretty and tasted awful. The la Bomba jalapeno made huge, beautiful peppers that would have been PERFECT for poppers, except they have zero heat. Also disappointing. The Mexican sunset, though, made a huge number of beautiful red banana peppers that are quite hot - hotter than a jalapeno but not as hot as a habanero? Very tasty, with a sweet aftertaste. New-to-me herbs here are shiso, majoram, savory, and sorrel. Seed Needs was having a sale lol. I'm not sure what to do with these, but I'm sure I have a couple of months to figure it out. Any suggestions are welcome!