Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

The 5 Best Products for Growing Food Indoors with Zero Gardening Experience in 2021

blueeyes/Shutterstock

Whether it’s the frigid winter, a global pandemic, or a lack of arable outdoor space preventing you from planting an edible garden right now, you can still enjoy fresh herbs, fruits, and veggies any time of year when you set up your very own indoor garden.

Indoor gardens come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from a small desktop system for herbs to large, multilevel stackable planters in which you can grow enough greens to make salads aplenty. Most of the time, all you need to do to grow these foods is occasionally add some water — of course, after you have your starter seeds and a few concentrated plant nutrients.

Recommended Videos

Today, we’ll look at five different products for indoor gardening, ranked not by quality or function but listed simply from smallest to largest in terms of space required (and, as it happens, in terms of the potential amount of food produced), and maybe you’ll realize that now is the perfect time to plant a garden.

Planter’s Choice Organic Herb Growing Kit

Planter's Choice Organic Herb Growing Kit
Image used with permission by copyright holder

This little herb kit is perfect for any window that gets decent light. The only thing needed beyond light is water. The kit comes with seeds for cilantro, chives, basil, and parsley, and it includes four soil discs that swell to seven times their dry size once watered, filling the included planters. The included booklet takes you through the process step by step, so it will be basically impossible to mess up the gardening here.

Click and Grow Smart Garden 3

Click & Grow Smart Garden 3
Image used with permission by copyright holder

This compact, slender, hydroponic garden comes with basil plant pods and can be used to grow plenty of said herb for all your pesto and caprese needs. However, it can also be used to grow anything from cilantro to strawberries to hot peppers. The system is less than 6 inches wide and barely a foot long, so it’s ideal for smaller apartments or even for use in a studio, office, or dorm room. Because it’s simple and rather stylish, you won’t mind having to look at it at all times.

AeroGarden Bounty Elite Indoor Hydroponic Garden

AeroGarden Bounty Elite Indoor Hydroponic Garden
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Notably larger than the original AeroGardens you might recall from a couple of decades past, this planter system is large enough to grow a lot of food — and fast. If you devote it to one or two types of produce you love — say, cherry tomatoes and arugula — and plant the pods on a slightly staggered basis, you’ll likely never have to buy those particular types of produce again. And because the system is Alexa-enabled, you can keep track of growing conditions and progress with your smartphone or your voice.

Mr. Stacky 5-Tiered Vertical Gardening Planter

Mr. Stacky 5-Tiered Vertical Gardening Planter
Image used with permission by copyright holder

While also perfectly well-suited to use outdoors, this large planter is a great choice for indoor gardening, provided you can get it decent light and rotate it daily. It can be used to grow up to 20 plants — strawberries, potted tomatoes, greens, etc.– in only about 2 square feet of floor space, thanks to its clever design. You’ll need to procure soil for this system, but once set up, using it is as easy as watering the top tier only; the water will trickle down evenly to the other plants. Consider adding some compost or fertilizer at some point, and set it on some sort of tray in case there’s a bit of leakage.

Greenjoy Indoor Hydroponic Growing System

Greenjoy Indoor Hydroponic Growing System
Image used with permission by copyright holder

One Greenjoy hydroponic garden box can help you raise enough greens, herbs, and fruits to feed a whole family fresh foods. Stack a few of these boxes on top of the other, and you can produce enough produce to feed a small army. You can grow 15 plants simultaneously in this planter, each of which can be started from a single seed. And these are full-sized plants, like heads of lettuce or kale, not little herbs, mind you. It can also be used for flowers if you want an indoor cutting garden.

Steven John
Steven John is a writer and journalist living just outside New York City, by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, by way of…
Topics
A Michelin-starred chef guides us on pairing wine and pasta
pasta courses at Massara NYC

Enjoying a nice bowl of fresh pasta? While steak and wine are often touted as the perfect pairing, pasta is also a complex pairing for wine. But with so many pasta types, cooking styles, and sauces, pairing pasta with wine is a complex task. We decided to try out the new pasta-tasting menu at Massara, a Southern Italian restaurant in New York helmed by Chef Stefano Secchi of Rezdôra (a one Michelin-starred restaurant).

"Michael Duffy and the somm team has done well in the pairing," said Chef Stefano Secchi. "Luckily, the wines on our list pair well with the food eaten in the region…a strong ethos and throughline of our restaurants."  

Read more
I tried the Kamado Joe Konnected Joe—here’s how it handled real recipes
Even if you make mistakes you can create crowd-pleasing meals with Kamado Joe Konnected Joe
Pre-heating the Kamado Joe Konnected Joe guarded by with Happy.

I jumped at the chance to test the Kamado Joe's Konnected Joe Digital Grill and Smoker. Like most members of our extended family of avid cooks and eager eaters, I enjoy grilling year-round. Still, my experience has been limited to conventional charcoal grills and three-burner propane grills. I was curious about what it would be like to cook with a ceramic grill, and grew even more excited by the prospect of precise temperature control promised by the Konnected Joe.
Why cook with a kamado-style grill

Kamado-style ovens, stoves, and grills use heated stone or ceramic to provide radiant heat that cooks the food. The Kamado Joe brand of kamado grills cooks with radiant heat, with thick ceramic sections in the cooker. It can take some time to reach the desired temperature, but the grill's heavy insulation retains the heat for a long time.

Read more
How I upgraded my De’Longhi Rivelia to make incredible cold espresso drinks
How to unlock six new cold foam recipes
De'Longhi Rivelia

I first started using the De'Longhi Rivelia espresso machine, the brand's newest fully automatic, innovative, and touchscreen espresso maker for home use. I was instantly impressed with how easy this espresso maker was to use and how quickly it made it possible to prepare all my favorite espresso-based beverages.

Ironically, I was so caught up in learning how to use the machine to make hot coffee drinks that I forgot it could also make cold coffee drinks. Once I upgraded with the De'Longhi LatteCrema Cool kit, I unlocked a whole new world of possibilities for cold coffee drinks, from an iced white flat to an iced cappuccino. This tiny upgrade changed the game, solidifying just how much I love this espresso machine.
De'Longhi Rivelia LatteCrema Cool

Read more