14 Things You Can Actually Grow in an AeroGarden (And 3 That Aren't Worth the Pod)

The first time someone asks me what to grow in an AeroGarden, I tell them to ignore the official seed pod kits for a minute and think about what they actually cook with. Because that’s where the real answer lives. Not in a marketing photo of perfect basil under purple light.

One thing to know before the list: what you can grow depends heavily on which machine you’re working with. The AeroGarden Harvest buy on Amazon has 6 pods and a smaller light footprint, great for herbs, fine for compact greens, limiting for anything that gets tall or bushy. The AeroGarden Bounty Basic buy on Amazon runs a 30W LED and fits 9 pods, which gives you the light intensity and grow height to actually pull off fruiting plants and flowers without babysitting them constantly. I’ll flag the model difference where it matters.

Fast Herbs (The Reliable Ones)

1. Basil

Basil is the gateway crop and for good reason. It grows fast, smells good, and you’ll use it constantly if you cook Italian food or make a lot of salads. I’ve run Genovese basil in my Harvest three times now. It’s usually ready to start pinching within 3 weeks.

One thing every beginner gets wrong: they let basil grow without harvesting it. Then it bolts, flowers, and the leaves turn bitter. Pinch the center stems back hard every week, and it’ll bush out and last months. Let it go and you get one big harvest and then a plant that’s basically done.

On nutrients: the AeroGarden liquid nutrients work, but I’ve had better color and density using a third-party A&B formula at a lighter dose. Full-strength feeds gave me slightly yellowed lower leaves on basil, dialing back by about a third fixed it.

2. Mint

Mint in a hydroponic system is honestly kind of incredible. It grows so fast you’ll be wondering what to do with it all. The main issue is that it’ll crowd out pod neighbors if you let it sprawl, so it works best when you dedicate a good chunk of the garden to it or run it solo. On the Harvest, two mint pods is the most I’d do alongside other herbs.

Spearmint and peppermint both do well. Mojito mint (technically a spearmint variety) is my personal favorite.

3. Chives

Chives are quiet achievers. Low maintenance, slow to bolt, and useful in the kitchen in small quantities. They don’t need much light or height, which makes them genuinely ideal for the Harvest. They grow thin and upright, so they don’t crowd neighbors either.

4. Parsley

Parsley is fine. I’ll be honest, it’s not exciting to grow, and it’s slow to establish compared to basil. The first two weeks I always think something’s wrong with it, and then it catches up. Flat-leaf varieties tend to do better than curly in my experience, though that’s probably just me not liking curly parsley to begin with.

5. Dill

This one gets interesting. Dill grows tall, taller than most people expect, and starts to compete with the light arm on the Harvest pretty quickly. On the Bounty Basic with its extra clearance, you have more room to work with. I’d call dill a Bounty crop. If you force it on the Harvest, you’ll spend a lot of time tying it back or harvesting aggressively just to keep it manageable.

6. Thyme

Thyme is low, slow, and reliable. It stays compact, doesn’t fight for light, and the flavor is actually more intense than what you get from grocery store bunches. Takes patience, it’s not giving you a harvest in week two, but once it’s going, you can clip from it for a long time.

Salad Greens

7. Leaf Lettuce

Leaf lettuce is where countertop hydroponics really pulls ahead of outdoor growing in my opinion. You get fast germination, clean leaves, and no soil pests. Loose-leaf varieties like Black Seeded Simpson or red leaf work better than heading types, you’re harvesting outer leaves continuously rather than waiting for a head to form.

The tip burn issue is real, though. It’s that brown, papery edge you get on inner leaves when calcium can’t move fast enough through the plant. I’ve written about how to manage it in detail over at the lettuce tip burn guide , the short version is that fan airflow and not letting the water level drop too low both help a lot.

Both the Harvest and Bounty Basic can handle lettuce. The Bounty’s extra pods let you stagger plantings, which gives you a more continuous harvest.

8. Arugula

Arugula germinates fast, grows faster, and bolts in warm conditions. That last part matters because AeroGardens run warm, especially if your kitchen gets afternoon sun. When arugula bolts, the leaves turn genuinely unpleasant, peppery tips into nuclear-hot bitterness. Harvest it young and often, and you’ll love it. Try to grow it to full size in a warm room and you’ll be disappointed.

9. Kale (Dwarf Varieties)

Standard kale gets enormous and won’t work. But dwarf Siberian kale or Red Russian kale in a hydroponic system stays more manageable, and the leaves are actually more tender than outdoor kale because the plant doesn’t need to harden off against weather. Give it the Bounty’s light and space. It’ll still crowd things if you plant too many pods, so two or three max alongside something compact like chives.

Fruiting Plants

10. Cherry Tomatoes (Dwarf Varieties)

This is the one people ask about most, and it’s also the one with the most caveats.

Dwarf or patio cherry tomato varieties can work in the Bounty Basic. Not standard indeterminate tomatoes, those will hit the light arm and keep going. You want something bred to stay small: Tumbling Tom, Tiny Tim, or similar. Even then, you’ll need to hand-pollinate the flowers (a small paintbrush or just a gentle shake of the stem works), and you need the 30W light that comes on the Bounty. The Harvest’s light output isn’t enough for fruiting.

Realistic yield expectation: a handful of cherry tomatoes every week or two once the plant is mature. Not grocery-store volume. But they taste genuinely good, and growing a tomato on your kitchen counter in February has its own satisfaction that’s hard to explain to non-gardeners.

11. Dwarf Peppers

Peppers work on the same logic as cherry tomatoes, compact variety, Bounty only, hand-pollination required. They take longer to fruit than tomatoes, and the plants stay smaller, which is actually an advantage in a 9-pod setup. Sweet mini peppers tend to do better than hot varieties in my experience, though I’ve seen people get jalapeños to fruit with patience.

12. Cucumbers (Compact Bush Varieties)

I’ll be real: cucumbers are a stretch. Bush cucumber varieties can work, but the vine habit is hard to contain and the fruit weight strains the pod holder. You’ll need to rig up some kind of support, and even then you’re doing a lot of maintenance. I’ve managed it once, got a few small cucumbers, and concluded it was more work than it was worth relative to just buying cucumbers. But if you want to try it, compact varieties on the Bounty Basic with a DIY trellis isn’t impossible.

Flowers

13. Pansies

Genuinely underrated in AeroGardens. Pansies stay compact, flower early, and the blooms are edible, they’re good on salads and look great as garnishes. They don’t need intense light, which means they’ll do fine on either the Harvest or Bounty. If you’ve got extra pods and you’re not going to use them all for herbs, pansies are a low-effort way to make the garden look nice.

14. Petunias

Petunias grow a bit bigger than pansies and get trailing, so they need some management. But they flower prolifically and add a lot of visual interest if your AeroGarden is in a visible spot. On the Bounty, you can let them trail out from the edge pods. On the Harvest, they’ll compete with herb neighbors pretty quickly, so I’d only do one pod of petunias and give it an outer position.

The 3 Things Not Worth the Pod

Large Tomatoes

I know someone’s going to try it anyway, so let me just describe what happens. The plant grows fast, hits the light arm height limit, keeps going, blocks light from everything else, needs pollinating, and then produces fruit that strains the pod and weighs down the stem. You might get one or two tomatoes. The plant takes over for months to do it. It’s not worth the space or the time. Stick to true dwarf or patio varieties, or skip tomatoes entirely.

Root Vegetables

Carrots, radishes, beets, turnips, none of these belong in a countertop hydroponic system. The root is the crop, and hydroponic pods don’t give roots the medium or the depth they need to form properly. You’ll get good-looking foliage and a stunted, deformed root if you get anything at all. Radishes are the most tempting because they’re so fast in soil, but they’ll frustrate you in an AeroGarden. Save the pod.

Corn

I shouldn’t have to say this, but people ask. Corn is a field crop that can grow eight feet tall. It cross-pollinates by wind. A single plant won’t produce ears without other plants nearby for pollination. It has no place in a countertop garden. Not on any model.

A Note on Nutrients and Thinning

Two things that don’t get enough attention in these lists.

On nutrients: the AeroGarden brand liquid feed is convenient but you’ll go through it faster than you expect. A third-party A&B hydroponics nutrient buy on Amazon costs a fraction of the price and, at the right dilution, works just as well. The formula I’ve been using mixes 5ml A and 5ml B per liter, which tracks with what works for most of what’s on this list. If you want to dig into alternatives more, I compared a bunch of them in the AeroGarden nutrient alternatives post .

On thinning: every guide mentions it briefly and moves on, but it genuinely matters. Each pod can germinate multiple seedlings, and if you let them all grow together, they compete for water and nutrients from day one. The instruction is to thin to one seedling per pod. What the instructions don’t explain is that you should do it early (within the first week of sprouting), and that you should snip the extras with scissors rather than pull them out, pulling can disturb the roots of the seedling you’re keeping. It feels wasteful to cut a healthy seedling. Do it anyway. The one that stays will grow better for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you grow vegetables in an AeroGarden Harvest?

Yes, but with limits. Leafy vegetables like lettuce, arugula, and kale work well. Fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and peppers need more light than the Harvest provides, those are better suited to the Bounty Basic.

How long does it take to grow basil in an AeroGarden?

You’ll see germination within 4-7 days, and most basil is large enough to start harvesting (by pinching) within 3-4 weeks. It won’t look like much at week two, that’s normal.

Can I grow flowers and herbs in the same AeroGarden?

You can, but think about size compatibility. A compact flower like a pansy next to thyme is fine. A bushy petunia next to basil will cause crowding issues. Use the outer pods for anything with trailing or spreading growth.

Do I need to hand-pollinate tomatoes in an AeroGarden?

Yes. There are no pollinators indoors, so the flowers won’t set fruit on their own. A small paintbrush transferred between open flowers works well. Gently shaking the stem also helps, the vibration mimics what a bumblebee does in the wild.

Can I use tap water in an AeroGarden?

Generally yes, but very hard tap water or heavily chlorinated water can cause problems over time. If your tap water sits above 400-500 ppm hardness, filtered water will give you better results. Letting tap water sit out overnight before adding it to the bowl helps with chlorine.

The real answer to “what should I grow” is: whatever you’ll actually harvest and eat. I’ve watched people grow perfect basil for months and never use it because they don’t cook with basil. Pick two or three things you reach for in the kitchen every week. Start there. The more exotic stuff is more satisfying once you know your machine.