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Dream of an Urban Compound
Ever dreamed of having a lush, green garden , with fresh produce, in the middle of your urban apartment? I did too. So many of us (especially millennials) have been talking about the fact that we'd all love to live on a compound, growing our own food, living with our best friends. My biggest problem with that isn't just that I was born in 1991 and therefore apparently missed out on the ability to buy a home in Los Angeles...
I also love living in the city, where it's difficult to find dirt. And the nearest community garden requires a hefty drive.
So while I can't make my (or your) compound dreams come true just yet, I can introduce you to one of the best things I have ever purchased that positively impacts my life every single day. The Lettuce Grow.
For the past two years, this hydroponic growing system has transformed my small living space into a thriving, self-sustaining garden. If you’re genuinely curious if this hydroponic garden can change your approach food and eating, keep reading. This my detailed two-year journey with the Lettuce Grow hydroponic tower.
First Impressions and Setup
When I first decided to purchase the Lettuce Grow Hydroponic Tower, I was both excited and skeptical. Could this sleek, vertical garden really deliver on its promises of easy, abundant, and delicious homegrown produce? But from the moment I unboxed it, I was impressed. The setup process was straightforward and user-friendly, even for someone with ADD and interesting challenges following instructions. Within an hour, we had our tower assembled and ready to go. The quality of the materials was immediately apparent. The tower felt sturdy and well-made, designed to last. I was so stoked to start planting.
The Growing Experience
Lettuce Grow as a company has made this product foolproof. You can’t kill these plants. You can order three-week-old seedlings (and I recommend it) through their app. This makes it so the plants are pretty resilient and mature by the time you insert them in your tower. The automatic watering and ring lighting system takes care of most of the hard work, leaving me with minimal maintenance. Well, I have very low maintenance, since this is one of my wife's tasks. But once a week, she spends about ten minutes adding a couple scoops of nutrients, topping off the water and checking the pH levels. We also have the whole tower on wheels so she can easily wheel it into the bathroom every few weeks to fill it all the way up with the shower head.
And they have made that entire process super straight forward, it's kind of absurdly easy. The biggest maintenance task is taking the whole thing apart and cleaning it, and I'd say that's honestly the one con of this entire thing. When we got ours they recommended every 6 months to take the components apart and give it a good cleaning. Now I think their site says every few months? We've opted to stick to the 6 months (shh) and haven't had issues. But that process does take more like 3 hours. I'd say it's well worth it for this constant source of incredible produce.
Now for a while there was apparently a whole thing happening with lettuce across the country and soLettuce Grow had to raise their prices to $5 per seedling. That was tight for our budget so I put my ADD deep dive power to work and learned how to grow our own hydroponic seedlings from seed. Trust me, it is way harder to get a good yield from this than just buying the seedling from Lettuce Grow. And at their normal $2.99/seedling prices that is a way better deal than trying to grow your own seeds. But, if that process interests you I've written about that experience here. Because honestly it is kind of fun, and wildly exhilarating/rewarding the first time you harvest a head of lettuce you nurtured from the seed. earning to grow my own seedlings from seed has been one of the most satisfying parts of this journey.
My First Harvest
The first time I tasted the lettuce from my tower, I was blown away. The flavor was outrageously good – the best lettuce I’ve ever had, and my mother agrees. There’s a crispness and freshness that you simply can’t find in store-bought produce. It reminds me of when I worked on an organic farm as my summer college job back in 2011 and tasted produce off the vine for the first time. It just hits different people.
One of the biggest conveniences is that you don’t have to wash or spin the lettuce. It’s ready to eat right off the tower, making meal prep incredibly easy. Growing our own basil and other herbs has become arguably too easy. We have a constant supply of fresh, fragrant herbs to elevate our cooking.
Why We Bought the 36 Slot Tower + How We Use It As Two Person Family
Alright, so many people would probably argue I'm a little bit...weird, for buying the large, apparently "restaurant suitable" 36 slot tower for just a two person household. And I would tell those people they're weird! And argue that this is the best way to have fresh lettuce and herbs almost all the time. We basically cycle our slots. So we spread about 20 seedlings out through the layers, and then 2-3 weeks later we place another order. depending on our travel schedule. So we will end up with big and small plants mixed in with each other almost all the time. This spreads our harvest times out, and times it pretty well so we've always got a supply. And if we're traveling more often (or just want to) we'll actually use the entire bottom row of 6 slots to exclusively grow basil. Then we pick off that as we want a few leaves here and there and eventually harvest it all at once to make a huge round of pesto that we then freeze and use over time. It's actually amazing. And I couldn't even imagine having a smaller tower.
Challenges and Adjustments
Growing indoors has its challenges, especially when experimenting with different plants. My first attempt at growing cherry tomatoes didn’t yield the results I hoped for – they attracted bugs and didn’t produce a single tomato. After that experience, I decided to focus on what worked best for us: lettuce and herbs. These plants thrive indoors and have become staples in our diet. I appreciate Lettuce Grow's help with this in the app as well which I believe has improved even since my first order over two years ago. They very clearly let you filter seedlings by what's good to grow outdoors vs indoors.
Daily Use
Using the produce from our Lettuce Grow Hydroponic Tower has become an integral part of our daily routine. Before dinner, we grab a giant head of lettuce and stick it in the fridge for a few hours. SImply because it's so much better cold. This single head makes a massive salad that would typically serve 4-6 people, but for us, it’s the perfect size for a hearty, nutritious dinner, that really fills me up.
One of our favorite meals is a fresh salad with air-fried tofu. It’s delicious and has completely changed my relationship with food, especially salads because I'm not kidding when I say this actually tastes incredible. Plus, knowing that I’m eating something I’ve grown myself adds an extra layer of satisfaction and healthfulness to each meal. But seriously, I get so pissed when we have to buy store or even farmers market lettuce, that we pretty much just don't do it anymore. We know we're gonna hate how it tastes.
Ordering and Customer Experience
Ordering seedlings from Lettuce Grow is super easy. I love their app – it’s intuitive and user-friendly. The three-week-old seedlings arrive quickly, and after a few more weeks in the tower, they’re ready for harvest The whole process is seamless.
We have had a few seedling arrive slightly damaged, and we just send a picture and they refund it. We also had one of our light rings stop working. They quickly helped us troubleshoot and send a replacement. And one round of seedlings we did have almost the whole thing go bad, which was wild. We sent them a photo on the app and they quickly responsed that it looked like our pH levels were way off. And they were indeed correct. That was our first round of growing after we had moved to a new apartment. My wife had a pretty regular routine with pHdown at the old place and didn't realize we needed to adjust and actually use their pH checker because the natural pH levels of the water at our new place were completely and utterly different. So I guess I kind of lied at the beginning of this post, you totally can kill these plants. It just takes an immense effort.
One of the Biggest Benefits of the Lettuce Grow
Besides a constant supply of incredible lettuce and herbs, grown indoors in the middle of a city, another huge benefit is that we no longer waste produce. We used to buy lettuce all the time, and it was so unappealing to us (yes we just bought it because we believed we should...idk if you can relate) that we would almost always end up tossing it in the trash. That's no longer an issue. No more wasted money. No more wasted food. On top of that, we also picked up a composter so we literally have such little food waste now it's wild. (You. can read about that here if you want). But this is so satisfying.
Random Other Benefits I think About Daily
- It's completely gorgeous and the number one conversation starter when someone enters our space\
- It brings our space to life in so many ways
- We set other plants at the base of it when they need a little extra sunlight. Super convenient.
- We don't have to turn on any of our other lights at night except for extra cozy vibes. I love no overhead light life.
- It acts as a timed light while we're traveling or out of town.
- It produces an amazing light to film as a content creator.
- We have it set up to be timed as our wake up light in the morning
My Final Thoughts
If you can't tell, I'm kind of obsessed. And now that I've written all of these thoughts for you to read my friends can finally stop hearing about it as my only outlet to talk about how freaking cool this thing is.
My experience with the Lettuce Grow Hydroponic Tower has been overwhelmingly epic. This thing is amazing. It’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. If you’re looking for an easy, efficient way to enjoy fresh, homegrown produce, I highly recommend it. It's worth noting there are other companies that are also offerin hydroponic growing systems. I've not had personal experiences with those, but have spoken with others, and through research definitely landed on Lettuce Grow for a reason. Best of luck, friend!
You can check out the lettuce grow here.
