Click and Grow Testimonial

This is not a paid sponsorship or review, just a happy young gardener sharing her experience using this product.

Are you a gardener with a green thumb? Do you breathe life into your plants without a second thought and always know what to do in order to care for them? Can you grow ANYTHING from a seed? That was my paternal grandfather. My papa could grow anything, and he had the garden to show for it, including a lemon tree and a half-dozen vegetable spread growing at any given time. Being an Italian man, and the child of immigrants, his favorite thing to grow was tomatoes.

When my papa died, I was heartbroken. Upon arrival to my grandparents' house to see his body, I sat in silence for 40 minutes refusing to leave him and join the wake my family was now having in the kitchen. I didn't know what to do, but sitting there was not helping me. So I went out to his garden with a cloth and a small basket. I walked out to each plant offering fruit or vegetable and placed one in the basket. I fashioned it similar to a flower arrangement and placed it on the chair facing the front door. I meant for it to serve as a symbol of my papa, and it did. My nana thanked me later for doing that for him, saying it was better than any flowers or sad sympathy plant.

Taking all of this into mind, I decided the best way for me to grieve my grandfather was to grow plants. Compost to make dirt. Do something to create life in this loss I was so painfully aware of. So I went to the local Home Depot nearly every paycheck to get seeds, seed starter kits, soil, everything. I asked for gardening tools for Christmas. I was determined to do this for him. Then I realized that I just wasn't cut out for this. My dog ate or dug up my plants. I had a screaming match with my sister blaming her for not watching him. I sprouted flowers only to have them die. The only plant I have still growing from this period of my grief is a starter piece from the lemon tree in my Papa's yard. That little baby tree will someday be a reminder to me of him, long after the house belongs to someone else perhaps. But I needed more.

My boyfriend came to the rescue with a gift from the glorious internet called a Click and Grow. It was a piece of equipment with a water reservoir, an extendable lamp, and basil seed pods guaranteed to grow. This little indoor garden was hydroponic, so it ran on water being drawn up into the soil pod with my sole task to be plugging the device in. The Click and Grow light runs for sixteen hours at a time, and the water reservoir need only to be filled bimonthly. This thing is absolutely foolproof. I started with fresh basil and now I'm growing tomatoes. Soon I'll grow strawberries, lavender, and even peppermint. The seed pods come in sets of three to match the three containers in the Click and Grow. Another option is to put a variety of pods in and white tabs to indicate which plants are which. So far I've stuck to growing one type of plant at a time, which works for me!

Overall, this has been an excellent product to use and enjoy. Every morning I wake up to little green sprouts of hope reminding me that life is delicate but good. I would recommend this product to anyone and everyone wanting to grow their own produce at home. Since my garden is indoors and mess free, I keep my plants safe from birds and other creatures. However, at approximately $99, the Click and Grow is not cheap. In addition, you are also responsible for helping to pollinate any flowering plants like tomatoes or strawberries since there are presumably no bees living in your home. (That being said, bees are critical to our ecosystem and to biodiversity at large. Google how you can help to save the bees.) So, will you take the Click and Grow plunge? As the company itself says, "Food matters. So grow your own."