Andrew Wegner | Ponderings of an Andy - garden

Rise Garden Two Year Follow Up

2022-12-07T08:45:00-06:00

Introduction¶

When I last talked about the [Rise Garden][risegarden] my family is using, it was during my first harvest two and a half years ago. I said I'd get the garden again. During the posts at the time, I also covered some physical changes that would be helpful and some application suggestions.

It's been two and a half years since I first assembled the garden and two years since my last update at the end of the previous article. Let's review and see how the garden has held up.

I mentioned above that I provided a few suggestions, and raised a few concerns. Here's a quick summary of those, so that we can easily see what I'm looking to address here based on concerns then.

Application
Number of plants the garden supports
Few fruiting plants
The number of pods that don't sprout
Subscription service item availability
Physical improvements
Nutrient build up
Pump

Application¶

Let's start with the application itself. In my previous post, I raised a couple concerns I had about the mobile application.

In good news, the splash screen issue has been resolved. The log in issue has also been resolved. I do still need to occasionally re-login, but overall, the application remembers me a lot longer than the handful of days it did at the time.

The lighting options have also been updated.

I have more than a simple time and duration option. The sunrise and sunset options aren't exactly what I asked for two years ago, but this is a nice compromise. It's winter, so I've moved my garden inside to a warmer location, which unfortunately places it out of direct sunlight. However, during the rest of the year, this gradual lighting is nice, because I was able to time it to when the sun hits the garden and when it does not. This allowed me to use less than 100% lighting through out the day.

I do have a complaint about this new screen though. Look back at my screen shot of the previous lighting page. Previously, I could select any time for the lights to come on, and it was a pretty intuitive hour/minute selector. Now, it is a single slider with 15 minute increments. It is really hard to hit exactly what you want with a slider. It takes a lot of small adjustments to get the time I want my lights to come on with this slider. I think moving to a slider from the hour/minute selector was a bad user experience choice.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only bad user experience change.

This new page showing my garden is awful. The previous version showed an overview of the entire garden, and then allowed me to click a plant to get more details. This version shows a single tray on a single level and involves both vertical and horizontal scrolling to see all of my plants. I do not like this change. There is a lot more tapping and dragging around the screen to find specific plants.

The last application problem I'm still seeing is that plant information is wildly inaccurate. This is my current pea plant, that the application says is past harvest. It hasn't even started flowering yet. In two years, this page has not been accurate for a single plant.

Plants¶

The marketing images show very full gardens. When I've attempted full gardens and followed the application's recommendations, I get sub-optimal harvests. The large plants crowd out one another, even with aggressive pruning. The vines will take over an entire level and smother others, without aggressive pruning.

The plants that I can get to grow most consistently are lettuces and herbs. Fortunately, we use a lot of both. But, it'd be nice to get a consistent pepper, tomato, cucumber or pea plant each harvest too. Unfortunately, adding more than a couple of those plants to the entire garden results in a plant that doesn't produce.

Combining this with the sprouting failure rate I mentioned 2 years ago, that hasn't improved, it becomes a gamble on what to grow sometimes. The sprouting problems continue to plague each harvest, with approximately 1 out of 10 seeds across all plants not sprouting. Unfortunately, on my latest batch, I had 3 lettuce and 1 pea plant that didn't sprout. This was my highest failure rate so far.

I did notice, while writing this post, that Rise Gardens released a new nursery. It only supports 4 pods though, compared to the 12 pods one of my current nurseries holds. I'd have to replan how and when I plant certain plants (or buy extra of these small nurseries). I like to get two sets of lettuce in for 1 tomato plant due to their different growth cycles. Fewer nursery spots would enforce more staggered growing. This isn't bad just something I'd need to adapt to.

Seed Subscriptions¶

I complained two years ago about the lack of variety packs. The garden came with a salad mix and a variety pack of plants. Those aren't offered as part of the subscription service. I don't need 4 tomato pods, because I can't get them all to grow at once, like I mentioned above. But, if I could get a tomato, a pepper and a couple other plants, I have a nice set of plants that I could use all at once. That is assuming that they all sprout.

I keep looking for this. Until then, I turn my subscription on and off for about three months at a time, because otherwise I just get too many seeds to utilize and I don't need to buy a subscription for seeds that have an increasingly common failure rate.

Garden Hardware¶

The garden hardware has held up really well. I did replace the original DC30 pump with the upgraded DC40 pump about six months ago. I did this because I kept getting nutrient build up in my tubing and along the bottom of my trays. Theoretically, the more powerful pump should solve this problem. At the end of my current harvest I'll have a better idea of how well it's worked, but I haven't had to do an emergency tube cleaning because the water couldn't get past the build up, so that is a positive.

I also installed chicken wire around the garden to give my climbing plants something to climb. This has been great at keeping the vine plants - peas and cucumbers - under control. It also has allowed a couple spots on the level they sit on to remain open because they don't completely overwhelm a tray. I have been able to utilize that to grow a faster plant on the level of these vine plants before they have spread all over.

The one physical concern I mentioned two years ago was the inability to easily level the garden. This still remains a problem because the garden needs to be level to ensure the water flows correctly. When I have the garden in my sunroom - which is less level than other areas of my house, I have a small wooden splint built to keep the garden leveled correctly.

I still highly recommend that Rise Garden make adjustable footings in their next iteration.

Summary Review¶

The question now: Would I get it again. Previously, I said that I absolutely would.

I would still do this again, but I think I'd get a smaller garden - something like the one level garden of mine, or maybe the personal sized garden for a handful of lettuce heads. This isn't because I don't want to grow plants indoors and year round. It's because I can't utilize all of the space I have now. A completely full garden hasn't been productive for me. I leave space open every time I plant. It's also due to the number of seeds that I've had not sprout. If I have less space to plant, I'll be a little more choosey on what I plant versus "I have some space available and might as well use it if these sprout". Additionally, the application changes have been very off putting. The new tray page is unusable and the inaccurate plant pages continue to be unhelpful.

This said, I am still enjoying growing my own food. It's still not sustainable, but that was never my goal. It's a fun activity. The kids enjoy planting and harvesting. They glance at it once and a while and provide updates on how they think things are growing or what we can harvest for a meal.

These stats fall into the same category as the plant stats. I'm not sure how reliable they actually are, but it is nice to see numbers. Saving nearly 3,000 gallons of water over two and a half years is a drop in the bucket, but it's still good to see an impact. Rise Gardens describes its "Food Miles" equation on their blog. Going with my calculations from this summer on gasoline savings and CO2 not produced due to remote work, I've made another tiny positive impact.

Finally, Rise Gardens: Add strawberries as a plant you provide in your subscriptions. I'd still like that API I talked about before, but I'd be much happier with strawberries.

Oh, and do something about the seeds not sprouting.

Rise Gardens Review

2020-05-29T10:00:00-05:00

Introduction¶

Before I close out this series with a quick run down of everything, I want to congratulate Rise Gardens on closing a round of funding to the tune of $2.6M this week. Well done, Rise Gardens!

I started this series a little over a month ago to document my new Rise Gardens indoor garden. I've covered everything from the [initial opening of the garden][unboxgarden], garden assembly, to [planting the first plants][plants]. I've covered the hardware of the garden and the software and subscription service. During this time, I've watched my plants sprout, grow and been harvested (at least some).

Harvest¶

A month isn't a lot of time for larger plants to grow. My tomatoes and peppers aren't even close to being ready, but several varieties of lettuce have been for a while. I've had the butter lettuce, romaine, and red oak already. My arugula is two days away from being ready, according to the app. I think it's more likely that it's about a week away.

Each variety has been good. I have favorites, based on tastes, but no complaints about the quality or taste of the lettuce. Surprisingly, the kids liked all of them too.

Five weeks into growing, and I have a decent crop growing. On the bottom, there are a couple tomato plants, some pepper plants, a swiss chard (almost to harvest too), and a tiny little kale plant. I finally got one of those to sprout. That was my last kale pod, so I'm happy at least one sprouted.

In the middle there are two basil plants and two chamomile plants. I've got a nursery started with some plants that will go in this area in about a week and a half. At the top is my lettuce. In this picture, I'd just removed two pods that had been completely harvested so it is a bit emptier than it had been.

On the bottom, you can see that I ran some twine to help hold up the plants. This was put in place to help the tomatoes before their stalks thickened. They had been leaning. Now that they are tall and thick though, they aren't even touching that twine.

It looks good!

Customer Support¶

I don't remember mentioning this in previous posts, but Rise Gardens has good customer support. I've reached out to them a few times for various questions. Each time I get a response within a couple days and have had my questions answered. They are friendly and know what they are talking about. Keep doing this Rise Gardens! As you grow, keep that focus on the customer.

Correction¶

In my post about assembling the garden I mentioned that there is a gap that appears when you place the small tray covers in place. It turns out, I was putting those trays on backward. This was pointed out to me by another Rise Garden owner. Thank you for your help!

In the picture above, you can see I have those trays in place correctly now. You can also see a long white stain on the second level that is clearly coming from the exit pipe. This is due to the splashing the water was doing before I turned the covers around and the lime in my water. When I clean the garden, this will get cleaned off too.

Final Summary¶

Rise Gardens has built an amazing product. It's not going to replace your trips to the grocery store. One garden isn't going to feed your family. But, it will supplement it. It will provide you with some fresh vegetables and herbs. It will allow you to grow for more of the year (especially in colder climates).

It's also proved to be very interesting for the kids. They love checking the garden each morning to see how big plants have gotten or how "their" plant is doing. They help out when nutrients are put in and like refilling the water with me.

There are a few areas that can be improved though. I think the biggest improvement that could be made, physically, is adding leveling feet. If the next iteration has adjustable feet, that solves the largest problem I had during assembly: how do I make this thing level?

Other areas of improvement are related to the software and subscription service. I mentioned these in my post about the software. Personally, I think the suggested times are a bit aggressive for plant harvesting. I'm continuing to watch, but based on the lettuces that have been harvested so far, the software tells me they are ready much earlier than they are. The subscription service could use a few additional features - mainly the ability to schedule selections out a few months and the newest seeds. I still don't see those and I think I'm going to miss them for June, because my shipping day is soon. I'll try again for July.

Of the wishlist of items I have, I'm hoping the round of funding they received can be partially used to meet some of these. On the software side, I'd love an API to pull back previous readings. On the hardware side, a light sensor and more lighting options would be amazing. If I had to pick between the two, I'd pick that API though...I am a programmer, so take that opinion with that bias in mind.

Would I get it again?¶

I absolutely would get this again. This is a great in door garden. It grows way more than herbs. It's large enough to grow big plants. It's expandable to grow more plants. It's easy enough to not kill plants. With a few improvements, I'd have no complaints at all.

Update: Oct. 2020¶

The first full harvest took place in late August/early September. I was reasonably pleased with most of the plants. I started the second crop a couple weeks ago, hoping to put some lessons learned into practice to do ever better this round. A few problems I had with my first crop:

I planted too many tomato and pepper plants. They grow larger than the shelf space and started growing up the sides.
I planted kale about two weeks after my first batch of seeds and by the time it was transferred to the garden it was tiny and overwhelmed by larger plants
Cucumbers had a lot of buds, but few fruits. I think this is because I didn't prune well enough.
The pepper plants grew very large, produced many flowers, but didn't produce a single pepper. I suspect part of this is due to pollination and competition with the tomatoes.

For this second crop, I've spread out the plants that grow large much more and will end up having empty space in the garden because they will quickly overwhelm the other plants. I've put lettuce and herbs on the top shelf and filled it reasonably well. I've put two cucumber plants on the middle shelf and will work on pruning them better and shaping the direction they grow so that they remain on this level instead of growing everywhere. Finally, I'm only doing one tomato and one pepper plant this time. I'm hopeful that I get some peppers. The tomatoes were very good, but with only one plant I am hoping it has more room to grow and less competition.

Rise Gardens App/Subscription Improvement suggestions

2020-05-24T23:45:00-05:00

Introduction¶

The [garden has been opened][unboxgarden]. The garden has been assembled. The nurseries were opened. The first plants have sprouted. I've had my first lettuce harvest (more on this next time). While waiting for that harvest, I offered suggestions on how to improve the hardware.

Today, after about a month of growing, monitoring and watching the sprouts go from seed to plate, I've been using the application almost daily. I have thoughts on how to make it even better. I have thoughts on how to make the subscription service better. I'll share those below.

Mobile Application¶

One of the selling points of the Rise Gardens is the mobile application. It's built to help you maintain your garden. For the most part, it works well. But there are some warts that need to be ironed out of it.

I am using the Android application.

Loading Screen¶

Launching the application presents you with the Rise Gardens splash screen.

Learn to love this splash screen. On a good day, it will show for a few seconds. On a bad day, the application will hang forever. There is a simple work around, force close the application and relaunch it, but that's rather annoying. I estimate that I encounter this problem every three to four times I launch the application.

Once I've made it past the loading screen, I find that every four to five days my log in information is forgotten.

So, every few days I have to log back in. It's also important to point out here that this log in is not the same as the login you use on their website. My login on the website contains a +. The application rejects that form of email address. Since I usually use +servicename to keep my login information easier to remember, this is rather annoying.

I can stay logged into Slack, Hangouts, Gmail, NextCloud, and countless other applications on my phone indefinitely. I should be able to do that same here too.

Plant Information¶

One of the nice things about the application, in addition to its ability to tell me how many and what kind of nutrients to add, is suggestions on when to harvest your plants. Unfortunately, I don't think it's very accurate.

This accuracy is something I'm aware of and am keeping in mind as I add nutrients too. If I can't trust one area, can I really trust the other? So far, with four different types of lettuce harvested, I don't see a reason not to trust it, but that thought is still in my head.

Why is it inaccurate?

On harvest day, this is the information presented by the application. There are a few things to notice in this screen shot. First, "0 days to harvest", yet still showing the "Mid-growth" data. Second, this didn't change to "harvest" until a full day later. Thinking about it now, I suspect the datetime of when I added the plant to a nursery was recorded, not just the day and is going by "hours since planted", to display the stage information.

This is the red oak lettuce on harvest day. This...is not ready. I will fully admit that I am not an experienced gardener, but this is a tiny little plant. I waited almost two full weeks after this picture was taken to actually harvest the plant. It had grown much larger by then.

I found the same type of problem with all of my lettuces. They all reached "Harvest day", but were not ready to be harvested. The other plants I have in the garden at the moment are longer growing and aren't to the flowering stages yet, so I'll watch for those stages in the application versus reality.

Subscription Service¶

One of the things I really like about Rise Gardens so far is the monthly subscription service, which sends plants that I've selected and nutrients to grow them. My shipping date for May just missed their newest plants, but I'm looking forward to getting a few of those in June.

That said, I do have a few suggestions for how to make the subscription service amazing.

Multipacks¶

One of the things that I was sent during the shipping delays was variety packs of seeds. I covered these in my post where I opened the nurseries. The subscription service doesn't allow this type of package. Instead, it ships four pods of an identical plant.

I'd like to try mint, or cat nip or a couple herbs that I haven't had or use very infrequently, but I don't need four pods of these plants. Instead, if I could create my own variety packs I'd be more willing to try some newer plants. This is how I got the red oak lettuce and the kale that is in the garden now. I wouldn't have gotten four pods of either of those, since that's just not what I need (or want, in the case of kale). But a single pod...sure. Might as well, and the kids can try something new.

Plan out multiple months¶

Plants are shipped out once a month. About ten days before that, I receive an email saying that my shipment is coming up. Five days before shipping I have the ability to go pick the plants I want and they are immediately locked in.

I'd love if this flow could go out multiple months. Instead of worrying about making sure I hit that five day window to make selections, let me pick the plants I want for the next three months or so and allow me to change those until a few days before shipping. Then I know what I'm going to be getting and if I decide that I don't like something or want to try something else in a few months I can still go change it.

Subscription plants vs Store plants¶

I missed the availability of new plants for my May shipment. I was looking forward to trying some of these for June. It turns out, the new plants aren't listed in the list of plants I can select for my subscription. This is incredibly disappointing.

Wishlist¶

I have two items that I really think would make Rise Gardens fantastic and both are software!

Access to old water readings¶

I know the application is sending my water readings somewhere. I have to log in, and the application doesn't work when the internet is down (tried...doesn't load). Give us the ability to pull those old readings via an API call so that I can plot them. I love data and I love visualizing data. More information via an API call would be even better. Things like:

How long the lights were on
Water level
Suggested nutrients to add
Suggested pH balance to add

Maybe if enough people can see and play with their old data we can even make some suggestions on what would work better. As it stands though, we don't have access to it. We put in water readings and that's it. It's gone.

I'd really love the ability to pull that old data back.

Allow better light control¶

Right now light control is pretty limited. You pick a time for them to turn on and a number of hours for them to stay on. That's it. (The hour thing is why I thought about when the plant status shifted from "Mid-growth" to "Harvest" as well)

I'd like the ability to be able to turn these lights on and off through out the day. As the sun crosses the sky, there are hours where the plants are in direct sunlight. I could turn the lights down to 50% intensity during those hours or off all together.

There are two open ports on the controller. A piece of hardware that can detect light level could be used to control on/off or light intensity level. Obviously you couldn't put it there right next to a plant, because the LEDs would affect the sensor, but put it on a post and it could tell you if the sun was shining on the garden.

This type of thing could also be used in different seasons to determine when to turn the lights on or off automatically. I can use natural light for part of the day, but when the days get shorter, I need the lights to stay on longer.

Summary¶

I'm nearly done with this series. I am only planning one last post - a final summary of everything so far and a quick summary of first harvests (I think it'll only be lettuce at that point).

Here I've covered the things that have frustrated me (application loading/login), things that can be improved (plant information) and offered a few suggestions to make the software and subscription better.

Overall, I think everything I've mentioned is do able with some development time. I am looking forward to how Rise Gardens continues to improve the product.

One thing that is very disappointing though, is that the new plants - cucumbers, bean mascotte, celery, catnip, and several more - aren't even available as options when selecting my next subscription plants. I hope this is resolved soon, because I really want to try some of these new plants.

The next post will be the last in the series and will cover harvest and my final, overall impressions of the garden.

Rise Gardens physical improvements suggestions

2020-05-05T10:00:00-05:00

Introduction¶

I've opened the garden, opened the nurseries and assembled the garden. I've planted my first pods and am now eagerly awaiting a harvest from the new Rise Gardens garden. While waiting, I have some time on my hands, so this post is an overview on what I really like and what I think can be improved. I'm going to just cover the physical garden in this post, and in the next one I'll go over some improvements that would make the mobile application and subscription service amazing.

Improvements¶

Let's start with what hasn't been great. It's customary to do good news, then bad news, but overall I am very pleased with the garden so far. Granted, I'm not even at my first harvest yet, but first impressions have been good. I wanted to end the post on the "good" things about the system.

Packaging¶

Packaging has been a mixed bag. Packaging of seed pods and nutrients, has been flawless. Packaging of the garden, itself, was less so. As I pointed out in my post where I [opened the garden][unboxgarden], there were areas where packaging just didn't hold up.

The screws broke out of their paper bag and scattered all over the inside of the tray. This particular tray has a few scratches on it that the other two levels do not. I presume it is from the sliding screws.

My suggestion here is to either put the screws into a plastic bag instead of the paper one, or put the paper bag of screws into a little box. A box the size the pods arrive in would be perfect.

My top shelf was also scratched. This was stored right next to the bottom shelf - with drawers - and both parts are metal. I assume they rubbed together during shipping, causing the scratch. I think the easiest way to prevent this would be to add some small barrier between the two.

Finally, for the packaging complaints, we return to the small little antenna. This looks like it was picked from a warehouse bin by a worker with dirty hands. That's not uncommon for that line of work. My suggestion, in this case, is to have the antennas stored in some kind of protection - a small plastic bag, perhaps.

Seeds¶

I'm now about three weeks into my first set of plants, and while a majority of them sprouted, there were several that did not. I know that not all seeds will sprout, but if I'm getting only four pods of seeds per box and one of those doesn't sprout, that's an expensive failure rate over time.

For my first transplanting, 7 out of 18 plants didn't sprout after 10 days. After 14 days, those seven still had not sprouted, but a new set of pods had.

Unfortunately, I don't have a suggestion on how to improve this right now. As I watch the next round of plants, and my May seeds when they arrive, I'll be watching failure rate carefully.

So far, this is my biggest and only major complaint.

Adjustable Feet¶

I have three items that I think would make an immediate improvement on how the system is physically assembled.

Something I mentioned in my assembly post, was that the area my garden sits in is not perfectly level. The garden needs to be level though, so that the water flows correctly. My solution to this was cardboard box slices the length of the foot, so that we could level it out.

My suggestion though, is to add adjustable feet. This eliminates the need for users to come up with a way to level a garden that is 50+ pounds that isn't supported by the company. It'd also look much nicer than 6-7 slices of cardboard stuffed under one leg.

Light Sensor¶

The next item on my wishlist would be a light sensor. The controller has two unused ports. A light sensor could fit into one of those ports and could be used to automatically decide if the overhead lights should be on and at what intensity.

As the year passes, the sun rises and sets at different times of day. I received my garden after day light saving kicked in this year, but I am curious how it handles that too. Right now, the lights are controlled by the application to come on at a specific time, stay on for a specific number of hours and then turn off. My garden receives sunlight throughout the day. I'd like to use the overhead lights to augment that natural light. If it's a cloudy day - turn on the lights. If it's during that time of day where the sun goes over the corner of the room so the garden is in shade, turn on the lights. If it's early in the morning and the sun is shining on the plants, but it's just not the intensity recommended, turn on the lights at an appropriate intensity to augment the sun. As it rises and places the garden in more direct sunlight, lower the lights.

Wire harness around controller¶

The garden has some nice grooves built into it to hide the wiring for the lights. It works really well and makes the garden look nice when you are looking at the plants, or showing off to family members. But, this nice wiring solution doesn't exist once everything is inside the cabinet. It's a giant free for all of wires. There are light wires, the pump power wire and the power cord for the whole system. It is fortunate that the wires are long enough that things can be moved and adjusted, but it also means that there is a mass of wires that hang around in there. A harness of some kind to keep these wires in the correct location would be helpful.

The good¶

With my list of complaints and wish list items out of the way, let's go over what has been good about the garden. Let's make it clear that, apart from my concern about the number of seeds that didn't grow, the scratches and other packaging things I mentioned are small and easy enough to ignore. The smudged antenna cleaned up and the scratched top can't be seen.

Craftsmanship¶

The design of the garden is fantastic. Assembly instructions are clear. At first they appeared to be long, but after using them during assembly, that's because they are complete. There were no missing steps. The components fit together well, the hardware needed to assemble the garden was all provided and nothing was missing.

The kids helped to assemble it, and I believe that's a testament to how easy it is to put together. They knew what to do and how to help.

The system is solid. I am confident it's going to hold the weight of the water and the plants. The biggest thing I need to worry about is a power outage, which would drain the water (due to gravity) in the basin in the cabinet. If this happens soon after I refill the water, I suspect it'd overflow. It'll happen at some point, so we'll see how it works out. But, apart from using a larger basin for a three level garden, I don't think there is anything that needs to change here.

Support¶

I've reached out to Rise Gardens support a few times now for various questions I had. I did this both pre-purchase and post-purchase. In all cases, support has provided me with accurate and helpful answers within a day or two. During the delivery delays, the company continued to communicate with me.

If they keep this high quality customer support and open communication thing going, they will do well in building customer loyalty.

It works¶

Rise Gardens is a young company. It's been my experience that young companies don't always turn out high quality productions on their first iteration. Rise Gardens has shown that experience is not the rule. Everything worked as expected when I assembled it.

The pump, the electronics, the assembly instructions. It all just works.

Summary¶

The physical hardware of the garden has a few areas where improvement would take a great product to even another level. The packaging could be improved to reduce some of the cosmetic complaints I have.

This is a great design. Rise Gardens has clearly put in the time to design something that works as expected, but is easy to set up, maintain, and use.

In my next post, I'm going to cover some more improvement ideas focused on the mobile application and subscription service.

Planting the first crop in the Rise Garden

2020-05-01T10:00:00-05:00

Introduction¶

I've opened the garden, opened the nurseries and assembled the garden. In this post, we plant the first round of seeds, set them in the nursery and wait for them to grow. Let's continue on this new hydroponic journey with the Rise Gardens indoor garden.

Planting Pods¶

In my post about opening the nurseries, I had pictures of what the seed pods look like. These pods fit very easily into the pod holders and then slip into the nursery trays. With the variety packs and first round of seeds we received, it was time to pick what to plant first.

The first decision we made was that we wouldn't try to grow everything all at once. I can only eat so much lettuce or so many peppers at a time. I don't want everything ready for harvest all at once. So, we had the kids fill one nursery while we filled half of another.

Our initial selections were tomatoes, peppers, two types of lettuce, some chamomile, and basil.

The kids filled their nursery. We recorded which plant was which in the Rise Garden app, filled the water level as appropriate, and set it in the sun.

We planted half a nursery's worth of plants, filled the water level, and set it in the sun.

With everything planted, we updated the app, and started waiting. Let's see how these grow!

Three days later¶

Each morning the kids ran down to the nurseries and looked inside eagerly to see if anything had grown. On day three, we saw our first sprouts - chamomile. The kids were excited because this was in their nursery.

Day 6¶

On day six, the kid's nursery had several sprouts. In the image above, you can see a couple lettuces, some swiss chard, the chamomile, and a small tomato sprout.

The adult nursery was much less green. We have some lettuce.

Transplanting¶

Ten days after the initial pods were put into the nurseries, we had sprouts that were touching the roof of the nursery. I figured it was time to transplant some of the more mature ones. Even though we were a week and a half later, there were not sprouts in all of the pods. We didn't transplant those.

Here, we can see the lettuces transplanted to the top layer of the garden. Lettuce doesn't grow tall, so it doesn't need the extra space provided on the bottom layer. It's also a single harvest, and should grow relatively quickly. We figured the top level would be great for the faster cycling plants.

We stuck the larger plants - swiss chard, tomatoes and peppers - on the bottom level and left anything else for the middle.

In total, eleven out of 18 pods were transplanted. The other 7 didn't have sprouts yet. The hope is they will in a few days. If not, that's a fairly high failure rate and we'll have to figure out something else to plant.

With the first round of plants in the garden, each of us picked one additional pod to plant and added that to the nursery for the next cycle.

Summary¶

We've finally made it to the garden. Unfortunately, the next step - harvesting - is a ways off. Even the fastest plants are at least a month or more away. That's fine though, by the time we can start harvesting, we'll be ready for it.

I'm a little concerned about the number of pods that didn't sprout. It is our first attempt though, so maybe it was a combination of which plants were together and which took in more water. We'll be experimenting with different groupings.

The kids continue to be super interested in this, which is exciting to see. They've grown attached to some of the plants they've never eaten before, both in the current round of plants and in the plants now in the nursery.

Next in this series is my impressions so far, along with a set of changes that would be nice to make the product even better. This will cover both the physical hardware and the electronics/automation side too.

Assembling the Rise Garden

2020-04-26T01:10:00-05:00

Introduction¶

It's time to assemble the Rise Gardens indoor garden. In previous posts you can find the process of unboxing the garden and the process of unboxing the nurseries. Today, we assemble.

Rise Gardens makes the following claim on their web page:

Within an hour, you can assemble your garden, connect your app, and plant your first herbs and veggies.

Spoiler: If you don't have children helping, you can definitely hit that one hour mark. For me, the kids wanted to help assemble, so it took about an hour and a half. Not a big deal. It was a good family project and assembly was fairly easy.

Assembly¶

The assembly manual that we pulled out while unboxing the garden is misleading in how complex the process is. It is a fairly thick manual, but it turns out that is because Rise Gardens has documented the process very well. Most pieces just fit together, get a couple screws and you keep working your way up.

Lower Shelf and Level¶

The process starts at the base. It's important to note, and it is noted somewhere in the manual, that the garden needs to be level so that the water flows correctly. If it's not level, water has this weird thing about not going where you expect.

We stuck this in a sun room built on a concrete slab. It's not the most level thing in the area. But, with a level and some ingenuity we solved that problem.

The metal shelf sits an inch or two off the ground once the feet have been attached. The screw holes on the bracket are designed to catch holes built into the shelf. Then they are tightened into place.

The lower tray operates on the same principle. The tray catches on, then is screwed into place with the included allen wrench.

Upper Levels¶

The next two levels are installed by adding the extensions for the level. They attach via a screw to each upright post.

These trays are also attached the same way. On the bottom of these trays is the light that will shine down on the level below.

Adding the third level is the same as the second. It is topped with the light. If you look closely at the right foot in this picture, you'll notice we have wedged several layers of cardboard under the foot to ensure the garden is level.

Plumbing¶

The plumbing was as easy to add as the trays. On the lowest level, we added the thick flexible tubes into the basin below.

The short tube in the back is the pipe that will go up to the plant trays. The longer front one is the water return. I didn't capture a picture, but the small flexible tubing we unboxed earlier actually will go inside the back tube. This is different than I envisioned while unboxing it, but frankly makes a lot of sense. This is a thick pipe and I didn't understand how we wouldn't just flood the system with that much water. The small tubing is much better suited for the task.

The inflexible black pipes fit into the trays. In the picture above, you can see the plumbing pipes on the left hand side of the garden.

The water will flow from the basin at the bottom, all the way to the back top. It will flow around the edge on the right and drain down to the lower level. This will repeat for the second level and then the first and flow back into the water basin.

Testing the system¶

With assembly done, it was time to test the lights and add the water to look for leaks.

Light check went well. They work at full power and 50% power, as expected.

Adding water to the basin and trays and turning on the pump went better than expected too. Water and I don't always get along. In this case though, water went up and cycled through as expected.

But, there was one aspect I didn't like about plant trays and the water. Each level has three large plant trays with four holes each to support twelve plants on the level. There is also a gap by the plumbing that has a small black covering too. That covering doesn't fit though.

There is a gap that forms, because the output pipe on each level prevents this covering from sitting flat. When the pump was first turned on and for the first few hours, we noticed that water was splashing out of this gap.

As you can see here, the output pipe and its 90 degree elbow doesn't fit under the black tray covering.

This is something I'll have to keep an eye on. I have had the system running for about a week, by the time this was posted. The first day or two, while the water level was high, I noticed this splashing. As the water level got lower though, I noticed less and less.

Summary¶

Assembly was incredibly easy. The kids helped do almost all of it. Plumbing was also easy. Almost, plug and play, easy. I give huge props to Rise Gardens to making the assembly so simple.

I have one big complaint, but it's not related to assembly. It's related to the tray gap I mentioned above. I really wish the output pipe didn't get in the way of the black tray coverings, so that it could sit flat.

I also have one suggestion. In the next iteration, put adjustable feet on the bottom of the upright brackets. I can't imagine I'm the only one with an uneven floor, and it'd be so much easier to level it with some adjustable feet.

The build quality is good, minus that tray fitting. It feels very stable. I've had the water running for a week now and the plants in the nursery are getting close to the point where they can be transplanted to the garden.

Next up, planting the nursery and watching the seeds sprout.

Unboxing garden nurseries

2020-04-24T10:00:00-05:00

Introduction¶

In my last post, I opened all of the boxes related to my new indoor, hydroponic garden from Rise Gardens. Today's post goes over the opening of the three nurseries I received. Let's continue my review of the new Rise Gardens farm!

I mentioned in my first post, that there were shipping delays with the garden. One of the things that Rise Gardens did to make up for this was ship additional nurseries, nutrients and seeds.

The nurseries showed up a week before the garden did. Had I been planning properly, I would have set them up at that time. That way when the garden arrived I'd be a week into waiting for my sprouts. Alas, I did not, so the garden was assembled the same day the nurseries were started.

Oh well. On to the unboxing!

The Unboxing¶

The nurseries showed up in three boxes, all taped together. This should have been my first indication that the company loves tape.

Boxes two and three had identical contents. Box one had a couple extras. The first extra was this nice quick start guide.

It very quickly covers what's in the three boxes:

Nutrient Sensor
Batteries
Nutrients
Plant Holders (12 for the nursery, plus 6 extra for the next round of plants)
Seed packs. It says 4, but boxes two and three actually had five seed packs

It also gives you a quick overview of how to use the nursery. It's pretty simple:

Take the cover off a seed pod
Don't dump out the seed
Place it in the nursery
Put in the appropriate amount of water

The last step in the quick start is a note on the application provided by Rise Gardens. I'm new at hydroponics, so I'm looking forward to using this for the first few growing cycles. I'm also hoping that I learn something about how much nutrient solution I should be adding, so that I don't need to be reliant on the app in the future. We'll see how that works out. Technology is nice.

On to the nursery! I'm going to admit, I was surprised by how small this nursery is. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was larger. Now that I've thought about it for more than five seconds though, this is perfect. This is a nursery. It's designed to help the plants sprout, not grow. That's what the garden is for.

The nursery holds twelve plant pods and has a hole for adding water. If you look closely at the inside of the quick start guide, you'll see the nice bold warning: Never add nutrients to nursery.

The plant pods, or net cups as the quick start calls them, clip into the nursery. They are easy to add and remove. They are also much more solidly built than the plastic of the nursery. I'm interested in seeing how the nursery holds up after a couple cycles of clipping/unclipping these pods.

The last thing in the first box, apart from the seeds, is the nutrient sensor and extra batteries. Before I migrate plants from the nursery to the garden, I'll read up on how this works. In the mean time, quickly looking at it I see that it does pH readings and EC (electro-current) readings. As I go through a few cycles, and with the help of the app, I'll figure out what is the correct range of values for each of these.

In boxes two and three, there were nutrients for the garden. It's not mentioned in the quick start, but in the large instruction manual provided with the garden itself, there are brief instructions on the difference between the two provided here. The general idea, though, is that it helps the plants grow and produce. Obviously.

The seeds¶

Now we get to the seeds. What will I be growing on the first round of plants. With a three tier garden, and three nurseries, I have room for 36 individual plants. That's a lot of vegetables all at once. I'm planning on staggering these in 3-4 week batches. That way I don't get 40 tomatoes all at once.

In the boxes, I received the same plants for each, plus an extra box of chamomile in boxes two and three. That's eight pods. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that much chamomile, but I'll figure it out.

Salad Mix¶

In each large box, I received two salad mix boxes. Each of these contains

1 pod of Red Oak lettuce
1 pod of butter lettuce
1 pod of dragoon romaine lettuce
1 pod of astro arugula

I'll have lettuce forever. Excellent. These also grow relatively quickly, so I'll be able to cycle through these consistently.

Variety Pack¶

I received a variety pack in each large box. This pack contains

1 pod of little bing tomatoes
1 pod of dwarf blue kale
1 pod of swiss chard bright lights
1 pod of fresh bites orange peppers

Basil¶

The last package of seeds was four pods of basil, in each large package. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with twelve basil pods, but again, I'll figure it out.

Plant Pod¶

The plant seed pods fit nicely into the net cups. There are a couple seeds in each pod.

Summary¶

The nurseries look easy enough to use. Select the plants I want, stick the seed pods into a net cup and add water. Wait a week or two for sprouts and then transfer to the garden until harvest time.

My only complaint about this entire round of unboxing is rather minor. Honestly, it wouldn't even be a complaint, if I hadn't received the variety packs of seeds. If, instead I'd gotten just single pods of lettuce or tomato or peppers, I wouldn't have thought of it.

My complaint is that I have twelve pods of basil. I don't use that much basil. A variety pack of herbs would have been awesome.

But, as I said, very minor complaint. I will figure out what to do with some fresh basil. I have family members that will probably be happy to get some.

All in all, the nurseries look good. The seeds look good. The tiny little gardener in me is ready to see if I can grow something.

With another unboxing complete, I am ready to start assembling the garden. My next post will cover assembly of the garden.

Unboxing and reviewing the new indoor Rise Gardens hydroponic garden

2020-04-22T10:00:00-05:00

Introduction¶

Over the next several posts, I'm going to provide my review of the family's new indoor garden. At the point this article is being written, it's been unboxed, assembled and we've planted the first round of seeds. I anticipate by the time I'm done with this series, I'll have some plants migrated from the nursery to the garden itself. Once I reach the point of harvest, I'll provide a follow up.

With that, let's begin my review of the new Rise Gardens farm!

Update: For the final summary, please read my final review. I encourage you to read the whole series because I cover individual aspects of the product, but if you are just looking for the final review, you can jump right to that here.

For most of last year, I had my mind set that I wanted a small indoor garden. We used to have an outdoor garden, but it never really did that well. This was due to both the soil and the wildlife. Last summer and fall, I went back and forth between building an internal garden and buying one and never really settled on one. During the winter, I found Rise Gardens.

This is a hydroponic garden, which is exactly what I wanted. I don't want soil everywhere and I'd prefer something self contained. Plus, I was secretly hoping the kids would find it exciting to watch vegetables grow and then harvest and eat them.

Shortly before the entire world shut down due to COVID-19, I ordered a garden. It was scheduled to ship in mid-February. Sadly, it did not. The shipping date arrived and an email notice was sent saying that shipping had been delayed approximately a month.

Mid-March showed up and again, no garden. This time, though, I was promised additional nurseries and some plant nutrients for waiting patiently. I had no major complaints and with the world slowly isolating itself, we were figuring out what was going on. The delay was not a problem.

Then came mid-April. Another email and another shipping delay. However, the nurseries, seeds and nutrients would ship on time with the garden being delayed a week. As the email said, the nurseries showed and a week later so did the garden.

The delays were unfortunate. But, I really have no major complaints. Rise Gardens was very communicative about the delays and the causes. A global pandemic will screw with your supply chain and logistics capabilities. Plus, the nurseries were nice. I'll cover those in a later article.

I appreciate the level of communication that I've seen so far. I hope that continues.

The Unboxing¶

Boxes¶

We ordered the triple level garden. According to the specifications, that means it's 66 inches tall and weighs 106 pounds. It showed up in three boxes.

The two boxes on the left are the second and third levels of the garden. The big box is the main garden, the water basin, and the electronic brains of the system.

Extensions¶

I started by opening the smaller boxes. Each extension comes with a planter tray, a grow light for the level below, some tray covers for the plants, wooden extensions to add to the main garden, and some assembly hardware (screws).

In this picture, the tray the water will sit in is the black tray. If you look closely, you see that it is in a white tray. This is the light cover for the lower level.

The second extension has the same hardware as the first. The difference is, this one didn't show up as nicely packaged. It looks like tape holding the tray covers in place came loose in shipping and allowed everything to slide around.

These brackets are nice. They have a spot to hide the wire used to plug in the lights, seem solidly made and (spoiler) fit together correctly when assembling the levels.

Each level of the garden has a set of grow lights. These are two LED panels. The light tray also holds the plastic water tray of the level above. The two holes you see at the top of this light panel are where the plumbing passes through to the next level.

Main Garden¶

The large garden box contains three big items inside.

The first item is the metal shelving unit. When assembled, this shelf will hold the water basin inside.

This shelf has two doors. On the outside are five LED lights which are used to indicate the water level of the basic. There is also a button that controls the LED lights. This button cycles through full intensity, half intensity and off.

The marks on the water basin correspond to the lights on the exterior of the shelving unit. There are five blue water level marks and five LEDs.

Tucked inside the water basin is the water pump. This hangs from the side of the basin and is submerged into the water.

Rise Gardens provides a watering can. This is useful for filling the trays as well as the basin.

On the side of the shelf unit is a spot to screw in the little antenna. This allows the control board to connect to the local wireless network. In doing so, you can connect your phone to the garden and receive updates about water levels as well as help in planning out your garden and when nutrients should be added.

My antenna showed up looking rather smudged.

The control board is already set up and attached to the internal side of the shelf unit. I am not sure what the A and B ports are used for and don't recall reading about them in the manual, but the rest of the ports are pretty easy to figure out.

Much like the extensions mentioned above, the main garden comes with the first tray of the system. Also like one of the extensions mentioned above, the internal parts of this tray came loose and shifted during transportation.

The assembly hardware and brick portion of the power supply slide all over. Some of the screws got wedged between the tray and the cardboard packaging.

Unfortunately, this also seems to have scratched the tray a bit.

The last part of the packaging is the top light and brackets. The brackets here are the legs that attach to the shelf and hold it off the ground. The light will be installed above the top level of plants.

Summary¶

I'll provide a more concise break down of pros and cons in a later article, so that you don't need to read each individual one. For now though, let's talk about what I thought while unboxing everything.

The first thing I noticed was that Rise Gardens provides printed instructions. This is something I'd been worried about. I had found their assembly instructions on their web site and I was concerned that's what I've had to use to assemble the garden. The included instructions are the same as those on the website, but I like the tangible instructions instead of needing my phone near by during assembly.

The second thing I noticed, both during this unboxing and while unboxing the nurseries is that Rise Gardens loves their packaging tape. Box seams are fully covered. Tape is not something they are concerned about...

...on the outside boxes. Internally though, the lack of tape or using cheap masking tape, caused internal components to break free and slide all over.

The hardware feels very high quality. I don't feel like I'm going to snap these wooden legs or brackets when I put weight on them. The control board, and the electronics in general, appear very well assembled.

In short, despite some packaging annoyances, I'm looking forward to assembling this thing over the coming day. Next up, though, is unpacking my first round of seeds and the nurseries.

Andrew Wegner | Ponderings of an Andy - garden

Rise Garden Two Year Follow Up

Introduction¶

Application¶

Plants¶

Seed Subscriptions¶

Garden Hardware¶

Summary Review¶

Rise Gardens Review

Introduction¶

Harvest¶

Customer Support¶

Correction¶

Final Summary¶

Would I get it again?¶

Update: Oct. 2020¶

Rise Gardens App/Subscription Improvement suggestions

Introduction¶

Mobile Application¶

Loading Screen¶

Login Screen¶

Plant Information¶

Subscription Service¶

Multipacks¶

Plan out multiple months¶

Subscription plants vs Store plants¶

Wishlist¶

Access to old water readings¶

Allow better light control¶

Summary¶

Rise Gardens physical improvements suggestions

Introduction¶

Improvements¶

Packaging¶

Seeds¶

Adjustable Feet¶

Light Sensor¶

Wire harness around controller¶

The good¶

Craftsmanship¶

Support¶

It works¶

Summary¶

Planting the first crop in the Rise Garden

Introduction¶

Planting Pods¶

Three days later¶

Day 6¶

Transplanting¶

Summary¶

Assembling the Rise Garden

Introduction¶

Assembly¶

Lower Shelf and Level¶

Upper Levels¶

Plumbing¶

Testing the system¶

Summary¶

Unboxing garden nurseries

Introduction¶

The Unboxing¶

The seeds¶

Salad Mix¶

Variety Pack¶

Basil¶

Plant Pod¶

Summary¶

Unboxing and reviewing the new indoor Rise Gardens hydroponic garden

Introduction¶

The Unboxing¶

Boxes¶

Extensions¶

Main Garden¶

Summary¶