This afternoon, I watched a YouTube recommendation video about a produce review called “Click & Grow Smart Herb Garden Starter Kit” (€59.95), a growing kit with builtin growing light, basically you just assemble it, plug in, and fill up the water reservoir, then that 21st gadget will take care of those plants. It’s designed for people who don’t have the knowledge or the time.

Frankly, this is worse than people put a plastic plant on office desk, in fact, I would prefer people have a fake plastic plants than buying a product like this. Lack of knowledge or time is simply an excuse, the time you go to the website and process your order is more than enough to read one or two article about growing any plants which you want to order with that kit. You can buy a good-looking plant from big stores or garden centers these days, if you still not to sure how to start from seeds.

It’s a journey of growing a plant, people buy this kind of product, sooner or later would either sell it or just put it in storage room, because there is no true joy in growing this way. I don’t even know if you can call it growing. Nothing is learned and experienced, because nothing you do is growing except filling in water. You don’t prepare soil, sow seeds, care it, water it, check up on it, re-pot it, and so on.

This morning, an opportunity presented itself, while I was tying up some tomato branches, I accidentally broke one. It was about 20 or 30cm long and had many leaves and small branches. Instead of cursing myself for not being careful enough, I saw a chance to try growing a new plant from that broken branch, which I have heard that you could plant sucker into water to root and then plant it.

It’s the way how you take care of your plants, that’s growing. With that kit, it’s just senseless purchase and then clipping some leaves to consume in first few weeks. You don’t even need to fill up water for a month, watering is part of growing, you examine the plant while giving it the water, make sure everything is fine and the plant is happy. If you have a water tank can hold up for a month, that plant eventually will die from drying out because you would even forget to fill up.

There will be a note in my growing history and experience, I will remember that instead of plugging in some device which I buy with ridiculous amount of money. Although, I kind of forgot the exact method, I stripped off bottom leaves and stuck it into a side of a container. I could have pulled it out, but this is another chance to try and see if directly planting would work. That’s an experiment, there is many ways of growing, that kit has only one.

Buying that kind of kit, it is a waste of money and produces a trash in the future once it’s no fun for you anymore, not economic nor ecological, it won’t be environment friendly in the long run. Moreover, those words and terms used on the website really are for people don’t know about gardening, “professional-grade seeds, smart soil, dual-coated nutrients, smart power,” all these with the “natural […] technology,” oh, sweet marketing, quite a good laugh for me.

What else did I do today?

  • I gave that Winter-overgrown mint plant a serious haircut and one for myself.
  • Moved the seed tray to my cardboard-made drying box, plus the green tomatoes.