The AeroGarden nutrient pods are roughly $25 for a 3-month supply, which sounds fine until you do the math and realize you’re paying an absurd premium per milliliter compared to basically any hydroponic nutrient solution sold by a company that isn’t trying to lock you into their ecosystem. I switched to third-party nutrients sometime in my second year of growing, mostly out of annoyance, and I haven’t looked back.
There are a few things worth knowing before you dump your AeroGarden brand bottles and grab whatever’s cheapest on Amazon, though. The nutrient market for AeroGarden-compatible A&B solutions has exploded in the last couple of years, and there’s real variation in quality, dosing instructions, and how well they work for different plants. What follows is what I’d actually tell a friend who was standing in front of their AeroGarden wondering why they’re spending so much on a product that could easily be swapped out.
Why the A&B format matters
AeroGarden’s own liquid nutrients are a single-bottle solution. Almost every alternative on the market uses A&B format, which means two separate bottles that you mix together in your reservoir. This isn’t a gimmick, it’s actually how professional hydroponic nutrients work, because certain minerals can’t coexist in concentrated form without binding together and becoming unavailable to your plants. You mix them in the reservoir and that problem goes away. So if you’re switching from AeroGarden brand, you’re also switching formats. That’s fine, but it does mean you need to measure.
More on that in the dosing section.
The 4 alternatives worth buying
Option 1: The one I’d actually buy first
The B0C38RY6JP buy on Amazon nutrient set runs about $11 and has over 1,100 reviews at 4.7 stars, which is a pretty hard number to argue with at that price point. You get 800ml total in two bottles (A and B), plus six extra single-use nutrient packs. The extra packs are genuinely useful when you’re doing a small top-off and don’t want to measure out a full dose from the bottles.
Dosing is 5ml of A and 5ml of B per liter of water. That’s the standard. Write it on a piece of tape and stick it somewhere near your setup, because you’ll forget it at least once.
I’d buy this one first because the review count gives me actual confidence it’s not just some dropshipped formula that’ll burn your basil. It’s the one I’d hand to someone who’s never used third-party hydroponic nutrients before.
Option 2: Same idea, slightly more expensive
Ambgrow buy on Amazon is basically the same format, 800ml total A&B in two bottles, same six-pack of extras, for about $14. About 234 reviews at 4.5 stars. It works. I don’t have a strong reason to choose it over the $11 option unless the other one’s out of stock, but it’s a legitimate product and some people specifically look for the Ambgrow name because they’ve seen it recommended on the AeroGarden subreddit.
The extra $3 doesn’t buy you much that I can identify, but it’s not a bad product.
Option 3: More liquid for a bit more money
The Hapxalie buy on Amazon comes in 1000ml total and runs about $15. Same A&B system, same 5ml-plus-5ml dosing per liter. At 62 reviews and 4.6 stars it’s the newest of the bunch, which makes me slightly less confident recommending it as a first buy, not because anything looks wrong with it, but because 62 reviews is a small sample.
If you’re running a larger system or just doing more frequent reservoir changes, the extra volume is a reasonable reason to pay the extra dollar or two.
Option 4: Also on the list
The “Hydroponics Nutrients” A&B set buy on Amazon rounds out the four. It’s 800ml total, A&B format, and the product page lists it as compatible with AeroGarden and similar hydroponic systems. Price and review count weren’t available to me at time of writing, which is why I’m putting it fourth rather than leading with it. Worth a look, especially if the others are out of stock.
How to actually dose these
This is the part that most blog posts skip, which is why the same questions come up over and over on Reddit.
The standard ratio for all of these products is 5ml A and 5ml B per liter of water. That’s it. Use the measuring cup that comes with the bottles, measuring by eye into a reservoir is exactly how you end up with nutrient burn or pale, sad plants that you can’t diagnose.
For AeroGarden reservoirs specifically: the Bounty holds about 1.3 liters at full capacity, so I use about 6.5ml of A and 6.5ml B. The Harvest is smaller, closer to 0.7 liters, so I drop down to 3.5ml each. I’m rounding slightly, but it’s close enough that I haven’t had problems.
One thing that tripped me up early on: pH. Third-party nutrients are described as “pH-balanced,” which is true, but that just means they’re not wildly acidic or alkaline out of the bottle. Your tap water’s pH still matters. AeroGarden’s target range is 5.5 to 6.5. If you’re using well water or your tap is particularly hard, it’s worth picking up a basic pH testing kit. I went several months without checking pH and couldn’t figure out why my tomatoes looked fine but weren’t setting fruit. Could’ve been the pH. Could’ve been something else. I’m still not entirely sure.
Herbs vs. fruiting plants, does it matter?
Sort of. All four of these alternatives are general-purpose formulas, so they’re not specifically tuned for nitrogen-hungry leafy herbs versus potassium-hungry fruiting plants the way something like the General Hydroponics three-part system would be. For the average AeroGarden user growing basil, lettuce, and maybe some cherry tomatoes, the general-purpose formula works fine. I’ve grown both with the $11 option and the results were good.
If you’re running something more specific, trying to push a heavy fruiting plant like bell peppers through a full grow cycle, you might eventually want to look at a formula with a higher potassium ratio during the fruiting stage. But that’s a separate conversation, and for most people starting out, the A&B alternatives here are more than adequate. The tip burn I used to get on lettuce actually got better after switching to a third-party nutrient at a slightly lower dose than the AeroGarden default, though I wrote more about what’s actually going on with that in my lettuce guide .
What not to use
A few things people try that don’t work well:
Regular garden fertilizer is not a substitute. Standard NPK fertilizers like Miracle-Gro are formulated for soil, which has a whole ecosystem of microbes and minerals that hydroponics doesn’t replicate. You’ll get growth, but you’ll also likely get nutrient imbalances that are hard to diagnose and not worth the trouble.
Organic liquid fertilizers are a murkier situation. Fish emulsion, worm casting tea, and similar options can work in some hydroponic setups, but they tend to clog pumps and breed bacteria in recirculating systems. A countertop AeroGarden unit is not a good test bed for organic hydroponic solutions unless you’re ready to clean the pump very frequently.
Bloom boosters and “enhancer” products that are meant to be added on top of a complete nutrient solution, I’d skip these in a small countertop system. The reservoir is tiny, and the margin for getting the concentration wrong is narrow. More is not better here.
One practical note: 800ml of nutrients, dosed at 5ml A and 5ml B per top-off, goes further than you’d think. Depending on how often you’re doing full reservoir changes versus just topping up with water, a two-bottle set can last a couple of months easily. The AeroGarden app recommends adding nutrients every time the light reminds you, but for established plants in a stable system, I usually test the water first and skip the dose if things look healthy. Your plants will tell you if they’re hungry, lighter colored new leaves are usually the first sign.
The short version: get the $11 option with the 1,100+ reviews, use 5ml of each per liter, and stop paying AeroGarden’s markup.