Amount of tomato yield/harvest?

[shasti333]

I'm new to the board and am just ordering my Aerogarden harvet touch today. I am trying to decide if I want to start out with tomatoes or something else like gourmet herbs or all basil. I know you can only grow 2 or 3 tom plants in an AG harvest. What kind of yield are you getting from those plants? Am I tying up my garden for several months just to get a small handful of cherry tomatoes equivalent to a single pint box from the grocery store? Or do you get continuous tomatoes for several months, like a handful a week? Has anyone ever counted how many tomatoes they got total? Thanks!!

[Shawn]

First let me welcome you to the forum shasti333.

Congratulations on your almost purchase of the Harvest.  I have several Harvests in my home.  As for tomatoes, I am of no help to you as I have not grown them in the three years I have been AG'ing.  Well I tried once and I made the mistake of how I pruned it.  I myself love it for herbs, Lettuce, flowers and at least one or two pepper plants.  I do know several of our members have grown tomatoes in their Harvests. 

Suggestion, you may want to take a look at the Individual Garden Patches to see what others are growing in their machines.  I know someone grew the Yellow Canary Tomatoes in one, someone else did a micro one and there was also a red of some type.  So I know it can be done.

As for timing, that is all a personal decision on how long you want to grow before getting the fruits of your labor.  Tomatoes will take months, whereas herbs, especially basil you can enjoy in a couple of weeks. 

You may want to see who else jumps in and hopefully will be before you have to order.

Again, welcome and please keep us posted

[Rialle]

I have a Harvest as well and like Shawn said, different plants grow at different rates. 

I was torn between lettuce and toms in the harvest but ultimately decided to wait for one of my bigger machines to free up for toms (and maybe peppers). Lettuce is really good when it comes to instant gratification. Some of my pods germinated in two days. Just some food for thought. 

Also while you might be able to get away with that many plants, a lot of people seem to be having issues with their plants competing for space even in larger machines. I’d do one maybe two in a Harvest from having read other’s experiences here. Again like Shawn said there is a lot of good info here from user experience. 

[MaryL]

I would only ever put one tom plant in a Harvest, unless it’s the Mighty Mini kit. They take a very long time to fruit, but once they do, they do keep coming, I think for a couple of months.  You just have to remember to pollinate all the flowers. The more you stay on top of pollinating (I have been known to forget), the more tomatoes you’ll get.

Lettuce you will be able to eat in 3 weeks!  Then it grows back in 2 weeks and you can harvest it again. Another 2 weeks you can have a 3rd harvest. It’s a great place to start, because it’s quick. And then you can move on to longer gardens if you want.

Herbs are somewhere in the middle. They take longer than lettuce to be fully grown, but you can nibble on it along the way.  And they definitely are faster than a tomato plant.

I’m excited for you for your purchase!  I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

[ozzycoop]

The AG Heireloom Red get pretty big. I have a post about mine if I can find the link to put here. I had 3 plants in an AG Farm Plus and they went crazy. Over the course of their life I got bowls of tomatoes from the plants. Mostly though they never made it to a bowl. They went straight to my mouth.

Here is a link to my garden. I had 3 plants per 12 holes so my plants were under productive. They were over crowded. Still, I had lots of tomatoes. Maybe 4 pints over the life of the tomatoes. The plants seemed to put out two large harvests for me with the second being the largest. Almost immediately after the second harvest, the plants have went into some kind of sleep mode. My plants are 170 days old. 

aerogardenaddicts.com/thread/773/aerogarden-farm-plus-1st-planting