Can You Really Grow Cherry Tomatoes in an AeroGarden? (We Tried It)

My first cherry tomato harvest from the AeroGarden was six fruits. Total. From a plant I’d spent three months on.

Six fruits. My partner thought it was hilarious. I told her the next run would be better, and it was, but only because I figured out what I’d actually done wrong, which turned out to be three separate things happening at once. I’ll get to all of them.

The short version: yes, you can grow cherry tomatoes in an AeroGarden. It works. But it’s the most demanding thing I’ve grown in this setup, and there are specific ways it goes sideways that most guides gloss over or skip entirely. This is the article I wish I’d had before I started.

Which AeroGarden Model You Actually Need

This is where most people get into trouble before they’ve even planted anything.

The AeroGarden 7 LED buy on Amazon is a fine little machine for herbs. I have one. But for tomatoes, it’s genuinely not the right tool. It gives you seven pods, which sounds fine, but the light arm’s maximum height is the limiting factor, tomatoes get tall, and the 7’s grow light doesn’t give you the clearance to let a tomato plant do what it needs to do. You’ll be fighting the plant the whole time, pruning harder than you should, and the yield will reflect that. The 7 also runs a 20-watt LED, which is enough for basil but starts to feel underpowered once you’re trying to set fruit on a real fruiting plant. I’ve covered the model differences in more depth over here if you want to compare before buying.

For tomatoes specifically, the AeroGarden Bounty Basic buy on Amazon is where I’d tell someone to start. Nine pods, a 30-watt full-spectrum LED, and a grow arm that goes high enough to give you real working room. The larger water bowl matters too, tomatoes drink more than you’d think, and running low between top-ups is one of the fastest ways to stress the plant at exactly the wrong moment. The digital display and automatic light timer are things you stop noticing after a week, but they genuinely help during the early stages when you’re still building habits around checking the unit.

I wouldn’t try tomatoes in anything smaller than the Bounty. I’ve said it in my overview of what’s actually worth growing in these systems and I’ll say it again here: the pod count and the height clearance aren’t specs to skim past when you’re picking a model for a fruiting plant.

Which Cherry Tomato Varieties to Use

Standard cherry tomato seeds, the kind you’d start in a raised bed, tend to get away from you indoors. They want to be six feet tall. The AeroGarden does not want that for them.

The two varieties I’d actually recommend for this setup are Tumbling Tom and Red Robin. Both are bred to stay compact. Red Robin in particular stays genuinely small, which makes it easier to manage light distance and stops the plant from taking over the whole unit. Tumbling Tom trails a bit more and can get bushier, but it’s productive and handles the hydro environment well.

AeroGarden sells their own tomato pod kits, which are convenient and take the germination guesswork out of it. If you want to use your own seeds, you can absolutely do that with blank pods and grow sponges, but stick to the compact varieties. I made the mistake of trying a standard sweet cherry variety in my second run because I already had seeds. It worked, kind of, but I was pruning it every four days and the plant never really settled into a comfortable size.

Setting It Up: The Steps That Actually Matter

Starting the pods. Follow the standard AeroGarden setup, pods in, seeds in, fill the bowl to the fill line, set the light schedule. Nothing special here yet. Tomatoes germinate in around 7-10 days in my experience, sometimes a bit faster if your kitchen stays warm.

Light schedule. The default AeroGarden tomato setting runs lights for 16 hours. I’ve kept to that and it works fine. What I’ll add is this: figure out when you want your lights off, and set the schedule accordingly before the plants get established. My partner hates the grow light glowing at 2am, so I have mine set to come on at 7am and go off at 11pm. The Bounty Basic handles this automatically once you configure it, and it’s one of those small quality-of-life things that actually matters if you share your space with someone who has opinions about ambient light levels.

Thinning. If two seeds germinate in the same pod, keep one. I know it feels wasteful. Keep one. Two plants competing in a single pod will give you worse results than one healthy plant with room to grow.

Raising the light arm. Once the plants hit about 4 inches, start raising the grow arm to maintain a few inches of clearance between the canopy and the light. With the Bounty Basic’s 30-watt LED, getting the light too close causes bleaching on the upper leaves, I’ve had it happen and it’s easy to miss at first because the damage looks subtle. More on that in the failure modes section below.

Training the plant. Tomatoes want to climb. As stems extend, I loosely tie them to the grow arm supports or use small plant clips. It keeps the canopy from collapsing under its own weight once fruit starts setting.

Pollination, This Is the Part Nobody Tells You

This is the detail that separates a harvest from a very pretty plant.

Tomatoes are self-fertile, meaning each flower contains both the male and female parts needed to set fruit. Outdoors, wind and bees do the work of vibrating the flowers to release pollen. Indoors, in a still apartment, nothing does that work unless you do.

Get an electric toothbrush. A cheap one is fine. When your plant starts flowering, run the toothbrush against the back of each flower cluster, pressing it lightly against the stem just behind the flower. You’ll sometimes see a little puff of pollen if you look closely. Do this once every two days while flowers are open, morning is slightly better because that’s when pollen is freshest, though I’ll be honest, I usually do it whenever I remember. A cotton swab works in a pinch, but the vibration from the toothbrush is more effective at actually releasing the pollen.

Skipping this step is exactly why my first run only produced six tomatoes. The plant flowered beautifully. I did nothing. The flowers dropped. I had six fruit from the ones that self-pollinated by luck.

Don’t skip pollination.

Nutrients for a Heavy-Feeding Plant

Tomatoes eat more than herbs. That’s just the reality, and it’s something to plan for.

I’d strongly recommend using nutrients formulated for hydroponic systems rather than trying to adapt general-purpose fertilisers. The Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Liquid Plant Fertilizer buy on Amazon is the obvious pairing for an AeroGarden setup and works well as a straightforward option, you follow the reminders, you add the dose, you’re done. For a slightly larger supply if you’re planning multiple grows, the 16oz Aeroponics & Hydroponics Liquid Plant Food buy on Amazon stretches further and gets strong reviews for indoor hydro use.

The cadence I follow with tomatoes: I add nutrients every time I top up water, rather than only when the system prompts me. The Bounty Basic will remind you when to add plant food, but tomatoes are heavier feeders than the system’s default schedule is really calibrated for. From around week four onward, I check the water level every two to three days. In peak summer growth it was every day and a half.

Watch for yellowing leaves, particularly the older lower leaves first. Some yellowing down there is normal. But if you’re seeing pale new growth or yellow spreading up the plant, that’s usually a nutrient deficiency and the fix is simple, add nutrients and make sure your pH isn’t way off. I’ve written more about choosing and timing nutrients over at the nutrients guide if you want to get deeper into it.

One more thing: every couple of weeks, I do a partial water change rather than just topping up. Pour out about a third of the bowl, refill with fresh water, add nutrients proportionally. It keeps mineral salts from building up. I didn’t do this on my first run. By week eight the roots were looking unhappy and I couldn’t figure out why.

The Failure Modes I Actually Hit

Light burn. When the plant grows into the lamp, the top leaves bleach out and look almost white in patches. It happened to me when I went on a long weekend and forgot to raise the arm before I left. The plant recovered, but it set the fruit timeline back. Raise the arm proactively, don’t wait until the plant is touching the light.

Root rot. Brown, slimy roots that smell bad. I had a mild case around week six. The causes are usually low oxygen in the water, stagnant flow, or water temperature that’s too warm. My apartment gets hot in summer and the water bowl was sitting in direct afternoon sun from a window, that was my problem. Move the unit out of direct sunlight if you can. The pump needs to keep running; if yours stops working unexpectedly, here’s how I troubleshoot it .

No fruit set. Already covered this: pollination. But also check that your light schedule is actually set right. A plant that’s getting inconsistent light cycles gets confused about when to flower. The automatic timer on the Bounty Basic takes this off your plate, but double-check the settings after any power outage.

Overcrowding. I tried running four tomato pods in my first Bounty run. Two would have been better. The plants competed for light and airflow, and the lower stems stayed damp in ways that weren’t great. I’d do two pods of tomatoes max, filling remaining pods with something low-profile like basil or chives that won’t compete for the upper canopy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you grow cherry tomatoes in an AeroGarden Harvest? The Harvest only has six pods and a lower light arm maximum height than the Bounty. It’s workable with a very compact variety like Red Robin, but you’ll hit height constraints faster and have less room to manage the plant. The Bounty Basic is a much better starting point for tomatoes.

How long does it take to get cherry tomatoes from an AeroGarden? From seed to first harvest, expect 10-14 weeks for compact varieties in a well-maintained setup. Germination takes about a week, flowering starts around weeks 5-7, and fruit ripens a few weeks after pollination. It’s a long game compared to herbs.

Do AeroGarden cherry tomatoes taste good? Yes, genuinely. The flavour is closer to a garden tomato than anything you’ll buy at a grocery store in winter. The concentrated growing environment seems to produce fruit with decent sweetness. This was the thing that surprised me most about the whole project.

How often should I change the water in an AeroGarden growing tomatoes? I do a partial water change (roughly a third of the bowl) every two weeks, plus top-ups with fresh water and nutrients every two to three days. Full water changes stress the plant more than partial ones and aren’t necessary if you’re topping up regularly.

Can I use regular tomato fertiliser in an AeroGarden? I’d stick with hydroponic-specific liquid nutrients. Soil fertilisers aren’t formulated for water uptake the same way, and getting the ratios wrong in a small reservoir causes problems fast. The AeroGarden-branded nutrients or a dedicated hydroponic liquid food are the safer bet.

The honest summary: cherry tomatoes in an AeroGarden are absolutely doable, but they ask more of you than any herb I’ve grown in this setup. You’re committing to pollination duty, regular water checks, and paying attention to a plant that doesn’t always telegraph its problems obviously. Get the Bounty Basic, pick a compact variety, and don’t forget the electric toothbrush. The harvest in my third run was embarrassingly good and I ate most of it standing over the counter before my partner even knew they were ripe.