After mounting a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign last year, Click & Grow is finally ready to launch the second generation of its smart herb garden worldwide. The first units are set to ship to consumers today.
If you missed the project back when it first hit the scene, here’s a quick overview.
In a nutshell, the aim of Click & Grow’s smart garden system is to automatically provide the correct amount of water and nutrient balance needed for indoor plants to grow. Prior to launching its first-generation smart garden back in 2011, the company spent more than three years developing its core technology — a NASA-inspired nanotech soil material that’s specially engineered to supply plant roots with the proper amount of oxygen, water, and nutrients at any given time. With the help of this foundation, all you need to do in order to use the garden is simply plant your herbs, fill up the machine’s water reservoir, and hit go. In a matter of weeks (provided you’ve got good sunlight), you’ll have full-grown, ready-to-eat herbs. Basically, it’s a lazy gardeners dream.
The first generation was a big hit, but Click & Grow’s second generation hydroponic system is even better than the first. This time around, the system includes a low-power LED grow light up top, so even if your space doesn’t get much natural light, the system can provide optimal growing conditions for your herbs. The new model also plugs into a wall outlet rather than burning through quartets of AA batteries, and instead of a single large planting pod, Click & Grow 2.0 features three smaller pots, each with a different herb. This way, plants don’t have to compete with each other for nutrients.
The new Smart Herb Garden in available from the Click and Grow website for about $100, and includes three herbs—Basil, Lemongrass, and Thyme—though a variety of others are available separately. Refill cartridges are currently available for chili pepper, mini tomato, salad rocket, basil, thyme, and lemon balm; and Click & Grow will be adding cartridges for peppermint, rosemary, strawberry and others shortly.
Find out more here.