We know that not everyone can have a large outdoor garden for growing the herbs, spices and vegetables. This explains the proliferation of indoor growing kits, though these range from sets that barely keep your houseplants alive in the winter to full hydroponic systems that replace that backyard you wish you had. The best indoor herb garden kits allow you to grow a variety of herbs and have more than enough seasoning for a single meal.
For that reason, the best indoor herb garden kits with grow light attachments or built in lights are what you need for year-round, consistent and significant harvests. But what are the best herb garden kits on the market? The answer is that it depends on your needs.
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What to Look for In Indoor Herb Garden Kits
Indoor garden kits vary in size from nourishing a few plants to providing results similar to a full greenhouse. Some indoor herb gardens are tailored for raising sprouts, while others are designed to support tomatoes and lemon grass. Know what you want to grow so that you can select an indoor herb garden kit that supports it.
Another factor to consider is the environment it will be operating in. If you’re going to place the garden in a window where it receives significant natural light, any LED lights in the kit are supplementary. If it will sit in the corner of a room, you’ll need LED grow lights that are an alternative to natural sunlight.
If you’re going to raise sun-loving herbs or flowers, the garden kit will also need to be as bright as sunlight as far as your plants are concerned. If you’re going to be relying entirely on indoor lights, you should give preference to any indoor herb garden kit with grow light putting out more than 30 Watts.
The AeroGarden 45 Watt grow light is a perfect source of supplementary or primary light for your growing garden. This versatile light can be used in a variety of ways. That is mainly because this grow light comes with both a stand and hanging kit.
This grow light panel can be set up over a modest group of plants, and it can be angled to provide supplementary light to the under-growth of a plant. The stand can be adjusted vertically so that you can maintain the right light level as plants grow up.
You can hang it from above to act like an artificial sun. It contains a mix of white “day” light, blue and red LED lights. The grow light is expected to last up to 30,000 hours.
The only downside for this model is that it tries to be everything. It resembles sunlight for seedlings, but it doesn’t deliver the extra dose of red light that accelerates seedling growth, fruiting and flower formation.
It has a minimum of blue light, so it won’t strengthen thick stems on wilting plants. Use this for seedlings or as supplementary lights unless you’re using it with indoor plants that just need some sort of light to stay healthy.
This Aerogarden grow kit is designed for salad greens, flowers, vegetables and other plants that will grow much taller than seedlings. You can grow up to six plants at a time in this hydroponics system, assuming there is room for them in this “grow pot”. The kit comes with seeds for two types of basil, parsley, dill, thyme and mint.
Literally on top of all of this is a twenty Watt LED lighting system. It puts out strong red light to foster leaf and fruit growth. This is of the better good herb growing kits for the kitchen if you’re trying to supplement natural sunlight.
This AeroGarden model delivers nutrients through water. You have to add proprietary nutrients to it to nourish the plants. The kit includes a modest amount of the hydroponics solution; if you’re going to continue using this product, you’ll have to buy more of the hydroponics nutrient mix. The control panel warns you when you need to add water and nutrients.
Be careful to clean out the hydroponics system and aquaponics system and dry it out in between growing seasons to deter the growth of mold or algae.
One downside of this model is that its hydroponics motor is loud.
This is the biggest grow pod by AeroGarden on this list. And you pay a modest premium for this “grow pod” that can generate as much produce as a well-placed window box. This unit is big enough to let you grow the cherry tomato “kits” sold for the AeroGarden ultra, classic and extra models.
This is a decent indoor garden kit for tomatoes, peppers and other plants that are hard to raise in a standard container garden, too. Not everything that says you can plant tomatoes in it will actually yield many fruit.
This unit fosters up to seven growing plants. It is a hydroponics unit like the system above. This system gets its “ultra” tile in part because of the stronger 30 Watt LED light. The control system is smarter, too. It can automatically turn on and off the lights on a schedule as well as remind you to add nutrients and water.
It provides basic pre-programmed advice to the user. The kit comes with seeds for two types of basil, parsley, dill, thyme, mint and chives, the same as the AeroGarden 7. The kit includes a single season’s worth of hydroponics system nutrients.
One of the issues with this model is that the control panel is prone to failure, and that kills everything in the system. If you need replacement lights, and they do periodically burn out, it will cost you dearly.
The “Bounty Elite” has a distinctive look; it has a large red body in contrast to the AeroGarden indoor gardens’ black form. It can host up to nine plants. Again, this is a hydroponics system. It has much more powerful full spectrum lights; these lights put out 45 Watts of full spectrum light.
The “Bounty Elite” model comes with an interactive control panel. It not only reminds you to add water and nutrients but can be programmed with a schedule to turn on and off the lights. If you lose power, though, the control panel forgets everything and has to be manually reset.
This unit arrives with several different types of basil and parsley as well as thyme, dill, chives and mint seeds. You’ll also receive enough nutrients to grow all of it up to the point you harvest it.
There are sometimes issues with the control system not working as expected. If it dies, the entire unit is dead. In other cases, the electrical glitches cause the lights to strobe. As with all AeroGarden hydroponics units, it needs to be dried out between growing seasons and cleaned to minimize the appearance of mold.
This is a smaller and cheaper version of the AeroGarden Bounty above. If you pay a little more, you can get a compatible seed starting tray. This unit arrives with several different types of basil and parsley as well as thyme, dill, chives and mint seeds and enough hydroponic nutrients to raise all of it to maturity.
This unit has a 45 watt LED light, basic hydroponics system, a variety of seeds, and an advanced control panel. It is a nine pod garden, large enough to grow multiple batches of several different herbs. This is an indoor herb garden kit Lowes sometimes carries.
These systems tend to last about a year or two of heavy use, though that can be cut short if it is infected by mold or algae. If you lose power, the control panel forgets everything.
This hydroponics garden kit is designed for larger plants like basil or even tomatoes. (The “Smart Garden 3” comes with basil capsules.) You can pick from more than forty different fresh herb and fruit capsules to use with this herb garden kit. The only caveat here is that it can only grow plants that don’t need a lot of room.
It lets you drop in plant cartridges. Then add water, turn on the lights and let it grow. The upside of the model is that the drop-in capsules are supposed to have enough nutrients to nourish the plants without having to add anything but water.
However, if mold is growing on the capsules, you’ll need to dry it out and clean it up before you can safely grow more plants in it.
A point in favor of Click and Grow models is how quiet they are; when you don’t have to circulate nutrient mixtures, there’s no need to be as loud as some of the AeroGarden models.
There are complaints that some kits were shipped without any plant capsules. You will pay a couple dollars per plant capsule to replace them or replenish the plants after the first batch is done.A general problem with Click and Grow garden kits is weak customer service. It is hard to get them to honor the warranty.
This is one of the more affordable AeroGarden kits on this list. It has a compact footprint. It is available in a variety of colors. You can grow up to three plants at one time under the full spectrum, ten Watt, LED lights. The unit has a basic control panel. It comes with basil, parsley and dill seeds and enough nutrients to grow them to maturity.
This unit does better than other AeroGarden models in supporting taller salad greens and fruit like tomatoes. You can buy separate plant capsules for that purpose, though they cost several dollars apiece. This is the best indoor herb garden kit for those who specifically intend to raise sprouts.
You can’t raise the lights very high, so don’t put something that grows too tall in it. It has a fixed day-light cycle, so you can’t set the lights to be on for 16 hours to maximize yields.
The pump is prone to clogging up, is hard to clean, and even harder to get fixed if it dies. If the control panel loses power, you have to reset everything.
This unit is middle of the pack in terms of price. It is available in red, black and white.This unit can hold up to six plants, and it comes with six different seed pods: two types of basil, parsley, dill, thyme and mint. It can handle mid-sized salad greens and vegetables. It comes with a full-spectrum twenty Watt LED panel.
The control panel tells you when to add water and nutrients. The lights will cycle on and off automatically. You can turn it off manually if desired. Sometimes the control panel glitches and needs to be reset; this may force you to cycle through the entire program to reset it properly.
One of the downsides of this model is that the light panel tends to die after a few months of regular use. That’s disappointing given how much it costs and the price of replacement LED lights.
This large seed pod kit is middle of the pack in terms of price but offers better than average capacity. It is deep enough to let you grow salad greens and cherry tomatoes, though you have to pay extra for those plant pods. It has room for up to six plant pods, though your yields might be lower if you try to grow 6 salad greens or tomatoes.
The kit comes with mint, two types of basil, dill, thyme and parsley. You can find this unit in shiny metal gray, white, black and red. This model has a moderately large footprint.
This garden kit runs off water and hydroponics nutrients you add to the system. The control panel reminds you of when to add both.
The downsides of this unit include having an inferior control panel that doesn’t give much more than count down the days until you need to add water or nutrients and tendency to need to be reprogrammed if there is a power fluctuation. The LED lights sometimes die, too.
This seed pod kit has a relatively large footprint. That is in part because of its large capacity – up to nine plants. It comes with nine pods, several of which are basil and parsley. It is shipped with enough nutrients to grow nine plants to maturity.
This model is available in stainless steel, red and white. All versions come with a 45 Watt full spectrum light panel. The unit has a better than average control panel, though like other Aerogarden models, it can be glitchy.
One of the downsides of this model is the purchase price. You can find it on sale periodically for up to a third off. Take the time to dry it out and clean it between growing seasons or it will grow mold or algae. That’s a common problem with AeroGarden’s hydroponics systems. If you put in new seeds while there’s still algae or mold in the system, you will get little to nothing in the next crop.
One of the benefits of this model is its relatively low price, since a newer and more expensive version is available from the manufacturer. This unit lets you drop in any plant cartridge and go. You don’t have to add nutrients, just water.
Click and Grow beats AeroGarden brand garden kits in supporting larger plants like cherry tomatoes and large salad greens. For example, you can grow peppers and strawberries in the Click and Grow unit.
You can move the LED light panel up as the plants grow. Note that this unit only ships with basil, so you’ll have to buy any other plant capsules you want. You have to use their proprietary plant pods.
The LED light panel will stay on for 16 hours at a time by default, though you can turn it off manually. The control panel is supposed to monitor things like nutrient levels and water but it only really monitors water levels. This model is rather quiet, especially compared to an AeroGarden brand indoor garden kit.
A common complaint about Click and Grow in general is weak customer service if you have problems, whether or not the item is still under warranty.
This kit is not available now but you can buy another one by clicking below
This Harvest Elite model by Aerogarden is copper in color, not actually made out of copper. The same model is available in white, stainless steel gray and red. The LED lights put out 20 Watts. This isn’t quite bright enough to raise peppers and tomatoes unless there is natural light in addition to the LEDs.
The unit itself is cheap, though you can pay more for salad greens shipped with it instead of just herb seeds. It provides a broad, relatively large “gardening bed”. It supports half a dozen plants.
The control panel is mediocre. It takes a fair bit of effort to reset when the unit loses power. For example, you have to cycle the clock forward by 14 days to reset it. As with other AeroGarden units, be careful to dry it out and clean things to control algae and mold.
This kit is not available now but you can buy another one by clicking below
This Click and Grow “Smart Garden 9” can grow up to nine plant pods. You have to drop in the proprietary Click and Grow plant pods. The company offers everything from herbs to salad greens to full vegetables. The light panel can ratchet up as the plants need more vertical space. The unit’s lights are moderately strong.
This full sized indoor herb garden kit is available in white and matte gray.This unit is more expensive than average.
The unit ships with basil, tomato and lettuce capsules; additional or alternate grow capsules cost a couple of dollars each. We could joke this is one of the few Click and Grow garden kits that gives you more than basil, but that isn’t a joke.
One of the downsides with this model is that the lights sometimes die. It is almost impossible to get a hold of customer service, even if this happens shortly after you bought it.
This kit is not available now but you can buy another one by clicking below
14. Aerogarden Seven LED Indoor Garden with Seed Kit
This AeroGarden 7 is designed to grow salad greens, herbs, and modest flowers. It is a little bigger than the AeroGarden 6; this model holds 7 plants versus the model 6’s 6 slots. You pay a little more for that extra capacity.Like the prior AeroGarden model, this system grows plants via hydroponics.
It comes with a twenty Watt LED light system. The control panel warns you when you need to add water and nutrients. The kit comes with seeds for two types of basil, parsley, dill, thyme, mint and chives.
The system comes with enough nutrients for the hydroponics system to last one “season”. The lights themselves are more supplementary than sufficient to fuel the growth of seven different closely packed plants.
Take care to dry out this system between uses and clean it so that it doesn’t host mold the next time you start it up or foster algae. Also be careful not to spill water when you’re filling it.
This kit is not available now but you can buy another one by clicking below
This grow kit is moderately priced, smack dab in the middle between the expensive units and cheap ones. It comes with a standard mix of basil, dill, mint and parsley seeds.
The white seed pod lets you grow up to six plants at a time. It comes with a twenty Watt array of LED lights. You can adjust the light tray up as the plants grow. The control panel reminds you when to add water or nutrients. It turns lights on and off automatically.
If there is a power outage, you have to reprogram the control panel. In some cases, the unit malfunctions and resets the clock every few days. The automatic “on” doesn’t always work even if the control panel is working properly.
This kit is not available now but you can buy another one by clicking below
The best indoor herb garden kits of 2021 aren’t the cheapest or the most expensive but those that let you enjoy a bumper crop of whatever you’d like. Decide how many plants you’d like to grow, the types of plants you want to raise, the number and types of reminders you need and your budget.
Make sure you’re picking herb growing kits for the kitchen that will provide the supplementary or sole source of light your desired crop needs. Then you’ll be able to find a garden kit from our list.Many people are now doing herb gardening in their home.But if you want to do this garden easily you can choose any one of the above list.