Archive for the ‘Product / Retailer Reviews’ Category

The AeroG­a­r­den is an indoor, com­pact, self-contained hydro­ponic gar­den­ing sys­tem. They come in a vari­ety of sizes and col­ors with prices start­ing at only $49, includ­ing free ship­ping. They call it a “kitchen gar­den” because it can eas­ily fit on most people’s kitchen counter tops or any small space, allow­ing you to grow fresh veg­eta­bles, herbs, or flow­ers all year long.

Ever since we first saw this prod­uct adver­tised, Sandy and I have wanted one. We finally took the plunge when Sandy saw a good sale price on one of their mod­els. If you’re inter­ested in this prod­uct, visit their site every week to shop for sales. AeroG­a­r­den looks for any excuse to run a sale. (Don’t for­get to jump there each time from your favorite charity’s shop­ping page on ShopOnline4Charity.)

The sale that Sandy found was so good that she bought two units, both of them the AeroG­a­r­den Space­Saver 6 model, in an appro­pri­ately space-age sil­ver color. Both came with a Gourmet Herbs seed pod set (a com­bi­na­tion of basil, thyme, oregano, dill, mint and chives). She also wanted to grow salad greens, so she ordered one of those seed pod sets separately.

Assem­bly and plant­ing of our new AeroG­a­r­dens was a snap. The whole process took just a few min­utes. Then the wait­ing began…

For­tu­nately, we didn’t have to wait long. Within just a cou­ple of days the salad greens started to sprout. We were advised in the plant­ing kit that the herbs are slower grow­ing and would take longer, and we’ve found that to be true. It’s been a real hoot for us to check our gar­dens every day to see how much they’ve grown. The salad greens lit­er­ally dou­bled in size every day for sev­eral days in a row!

Main­te­nance is a piece of cake. The units we bought have sen­sors that tell us when to add nutri­ents and water, but even if you buy mod­els that don’t fea­ture this, all you do is remem­ber to add nutri­ents every two weeks and water as needed. The nutri­ents are pro­vided with your kit, either as tablets or pack­ets of liquid.

Yes­ter­day, less than four weeks from plant­ing day, we enjoyed our first har­vest of salad greens. Instruc­tions advise never har­vest­ing more than one-third of the growth at a time. Our first har­vest pro­vided enough let­tuce for a huge din­ner salad for both of us. Today we’re hav­ing spaghetti for lunch, sea­soned with fresh basil from our herb gar­den. (See our photo below.)

Like I said ear­lier, AeroG­a­r­dens come in a wide vari­ety of sizes and con­fig­u­ra­tions, rang­ing from 3-pod mod­els to extra-tall 7-pod units. They offer lots of seed pods for each type of unit allow­ing you to grow many dif­fer­ent types of herbs; veg­eta­bles such as cherry or heir­loom toma­toes, green beans, dif­fer­ent kinds of pep­pers; and sev­eral kinds of flow­ers. They even have a pod set for grow­ing your own tea plants! What’s more, they have kits for using your AeroG­a­r­den to start seedlings for trans­plant­ing to your out­door garden.

We’ve been thrilled with our AeroG­a­r­dens. They are ideal for apart­ment dwellers, fam­i­lies with kids, class­room projects or home school­ers, shut-ins, dorm rooms, or any­one who’s become con­vinced that they don’t have a green thumb but want some home grown fresh­ness in their diet. Grow­ing some of your own food is fun and is a great idea. AeroG­a­r­den makes it fool-proof. Highly recommended.

When I started build­ing this site in the sum­mer of 2009, I asked many of my friends who shop online where they shop and what they buy online. One of the most enthu­si­as­tic responses that I got was from Lesa who is a big fan of a par­tic­u­lar pre­mium tea ven­dor (who will remain unnamed until they agree to be listed on this site). I pushed Lesa’s “tea but­ton” and got about an hour’s worth of infor­ma­tion about the virtues of pre­mium tea — not the kind of stuff you buy at the gro­cery store, but the really good stuff. As a result of Lesa’s pas­sion for good tea, I signed a num­ber of high-end tea deal­ers as par­tic­i­pat­ing ven­dors for “ShopOnline.”

Your hum­ble Web­mas­ter fell in love with the tea sites that signed on with us and promptly placed an order with Mighty Leaf Tea for a green and white tea sam­pler assort­ment. The price for this 30-teabag assort­ment was $21.95, plus $7.95 for ship­ping and han­dling. With every order, Mighty Leaf lets you select two free teabags of your choice, so I received 32 teabags in seven dif­fer­ent vari­eties stored in an attrac­tive tea tin.

It was love at first sip.

The first vari­ety I tried was Green Tea Trop­i­cal, a health­ful, low-caffeine green tea infused with a melange of sweet, fruity fla­vors. Rocked my world. I’ve now tried all the vari­eties in the sam­ple assort­ment, which also included Moun­tain Spring Jas­mine, Organic Hojicha, White Orchard, and Mar­rakesh Mint. I have to be hon­est with you, some of these fla­vors didn’t appeal to me — until I actu­ally tasted them. Jas­mine is too flo­ral and per­fumy for me, but I like this tea in spite of that. Mint tea has never been “my cup of tea,” but I love Mighty Leaf’s Mar­rakesh Mint. It pleas­antly sur­prises me every time I taste it.

So what’s the dif­fer­ence between “the good stuff” and the gro­cery store stuff? A good tea is like a fine wine — it has lots of “com­plex­ity.” Dif­fer­ent parts of your tongue reg­is­ter a rain­bow of com­ple­men­tary fla­vors. It’s a party in your mouth. After I’ve had a cou­ple of cups of gro­cery store tea, my tongue feels like Astro­turf. Not so with the good stuff. The teas I’ve tried from Mighty Leaf have a smooth, almost creamy, con­sis­tency. Bye-bye “turf tongue.” And the huge vari­ety of teas avail­able from the pre­mium ven­dors offer some­thing for every palette. I’ve now got a tea wish list as long as my arm.

Suf­fice it to say that I look for­ward to a cup or two of tea every day now. It has become my 15-minute vaca­tion to peace­ful, exotic lands.

If you did the math in your head when I laid out the price of the pack­age that I bought, you prob­a­bly came to the con­clu­sion that I’m pay­ing almost a dol­lar for each cup of tea. I’m happy to point out that you would be quite wrong! I’m a big guy and I brew a big cup of tea, about 16 ounces each. Every Mighty Leaf teabag (excuse me, they refer to them as “silken, hand-woven, biodegrad­able tea pouches”) is good for a min­i­mum of two of these mega-mugs of tea, some­times three. That cuts the price per cup to less than half of what you would have guessed at first. If you brew normal-sized cups, you might be able to get even bet­ter mileage.

Some­times, for the third time that I use a “tea pouch,” I’ll use two of dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Tonight I enjoyed a blend of Mar­rakesh Mint and Moun­tain Spring Jas­mine. An out­stand­ing pair­ing! As a for­mer Diet Coke addict, I am happy to bliss­fully sip a cou­ple of mugs of tea per day, rather than mind­lessly gulp down vast quan­ti­ties of unhealthy soda pop. Another of our tea ven­dors, Ada­gio Tea, charges much less for ship­ping and offers free ship­ping on orders of $50 or more, and with all of our ven­dors, loose tea is a more eco­nom­i­cal option than teabags.

So now I’m a pre­mium tea con­vert. I recently read an inter­view with a man from Eng­land who was in Aus­tralia for a con­fer­ence he was speak­ing at. The inter­viewer asked him if he would con­sider relo­cat­ing to Oz. The Brit replied that the coun­try was gor­geous and the weather was incred­i­ble, but he couldn’t find a decent cup of tea in the whole coun­try. Tea was the deal breaker. I’m not that far over the edge yet, but I spend a lot of time brows­ing the tea site here on Sho­pOn­line, plan­ning my next purchase.

I encour­age you to take the plunge into the world of pre­mium teas. They make out­stand­ing gifts and they are a real treat for your­self, as well. Plus, all of the tea ven­dors at Sho­pOn­line pay a nice com­mis­sion for the char­ity of your choice, so place your order, brew a cup, put your feet up, and pre­pare to get cozy.