Growth Phases on the Pro Series AeroGardens

People sometimes inadvertently reset their Pro Series AeroGardens to Germination Phase by holding down the “Reset” button too long. To clear the blinking “Add Nutrient” light it is only necessary to press and quickly release the Reset button. If you hold it down, it will reset the AeroGarden Pro to Germination Phase.

There is, unfortunately, no way to advance the garden from Germination Phase to Initial Growth Phase. The timing must play itself out. Depending on which seed kit you are growing, this can vary between 4 and 21 days. (To see a chart of the Timing of the Light and Pump Cycles, click here.)

However, once the AeroGarden has gone from Germination to Initial Growth, the Pro AeroGarden can be manually “outsmarted” to move to Mature Growth. The engineers designed the Pro so that if it is in Initial Growth and the plants have grown large enough to be using so much water that the Bowl has run dry, then the garden will automatically set itself forward to Mature Growth. To make the AeroGarden advance from the Initial Growth Phase to the Mature Growth Phase, you must make it believe that it has run out of water.

Now the way the garden senses that the water level is low is by means of a little float that rides up and down with the water level inside the tube that says “Fill to Here” on the top of it. There are no electronics in the tube, just a magnetic float that trips a sensor in the base when the water is low. There is a tiny hole in the top of this “Fill to Here” tube, and if you open up a large paper clip and stick it down in this hole, it will push the float to the bottom of the Bowl, the “Water Level Low” light will start blinking, and the Garden will think it has run dry. You must hold it down for at least 30 seconds, but after that time, it should reset itself to “Mature Growth”.

There is also a way to get the AeroGarden Pro to be on exactly the timing that you want. If you set the AeroGarden on the Super Grow cycle the pump and lights will run continuously. If you then plug the AeroGarden into a wall outlet timer (available at most hardware stores), you can set the timer to go on and off exactly when you want.

To set the AeroGarden Pro to Super Grow cycle, set it on Strawberries, and then press and hold the Select button until the selection light starts blinking. Release the button, and your Pro is set to Super Grow.