Foody 12 - Vertical Hydroponic Garden - Self Watering - 44 Plant Sites - Grow Great Tasting Food Year Around - Made of Food Grade Polypropylene

I have a Tower Garden and wanted to compare the Foody to the tower garden. Since the cost was low enough, I went for it. I was completely confused as to how this thing even worked until I got it and set it up. It is described as a hydroponic system however it seems to me that it is an Aeroponic system just like the tower garden. Essentially this thing works the same as how a toilet flushes. Water is pumped from the bottom basin up to the top pod. Each Pod is connected to the pod below it by some basic pvc pipes. When the water fills up the first pod, once it reaches a certain level it starts to flow through the PVC pipe down to the pod below creating a suction which essentially sucks the water out of the top pod down into the pod below it. It's the same principle as how a toilet flushes. When you flush the toilet all it does is put more water into the bowl until it fills up enough to create a siphon which pulls the water out of the bowl and flushes it down the pipes. The cool thing about this is that the roots of the plants get soaked in water for a minute or so then once the flushing process happens, it sends the water down to the next pod. The roots are then exposed to air just like in the tower garden until it fills up again. The process keeps repeating itself. You can hear the water but it's not as loud as when a toilet flushes. I have mine located just outside of my living room and it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I kind of like the sound of the water running. Sounds a bit like a small waterfall. The whole idea of this thing is genius in my opinion and I was completely blown away when I saw how the water flowed through the pods.The only reason I did not give this five stars is because of the size of it. It holds way more plants than my tower garden does (Tower garden holds 20 plants and costs $525, Foody holds 44 plants and costs $389) but the plants are way too close together and as they start growing, as you can imagine, they start covering each other so the smaller plants don’t get as much light.I can honestly say if the manufacturer made a bigger version of this, it would be the best hydroponic system out there by far completely blowing away the tower garden. All they need to do is just make a bigger version of it to where it has more space in between the plants and thus would hold more water. Everything else about it other than the spacing is amazing. I love how they made the pods slowly rotate to get equal sunlight. The tower garden is a pain because I must go out every morning and rotate it a quarter turn so the plants get equal sunlight. Otherwise you have great growth on one side and slow growth on the other. That being said though, the tower garden is also an amazing product however the cost is way too high compared to what you get with the Foody. It comes with all the same stuff the tower garden does, PLUS they give you a TDS Meter with it (Tower garden does not). Set up was very easy.Growing comparison:I have the tower garden outside (I live in central California) and put the foody inside using the grow lights that you can purchase separately. Initially plant growth was about the same between the two until I decided to supplement the foody with some additional small LED grow lights that you can get on Amazon. Once I put these additional lights in place, the plants took off like crazy far surpassing the growth of the tower garden. The lighting system that they sell is way too inadequate on its own but adding a few additional small LED lights made a world of difference especially putting one over the top of the Foody so that the top plants have direct light above them. I purchased 4-12watt led lights and the difference was night and day. In the tower garden’s defense though, my tower location does not get as much direct sunlight as it should due to some trees that cast a shadow on it later in the afternoon. I feel If I did not have those trees blocking the sunlight, the growth would be the same.To speed up growth, I purchased some small pepper plants, Swiss chard, chives etc. from Home Depot and took all the dirt off the roots cleaning it up as best I could and put the roots into some rock wool and planted them in the tower garden and Foody. Everything is growing wonderfully. I did the same with some cilantro.The rest of the plants I have, I grew from seed. The growth rate has been much faster on the Foody with the additional LED lights I added.If the Foody makes a bigger version, it will get 5 stars all day long! The design and concept are amazing, just make an optional bigger version of it with better plant spacing and I will buy it immediately!

I bought one of these for my wife for Christmas, and we love it. Delivery was slightly delayed, but the seller contacted me ahead of time to apologize, explain the reasons, and update me on the timing. They actually called me rather than just sending an email--very nice. It came with clear instructions including pictures, and setting it up was very easy.My wife had been working with a low-cost hydroponic system based on 5-gallon buckets and an air pump, and while it did okay for hardy plants, it was (1) ugly, (2) took up a huge amount of floor space for a very limited number of plants, and (3) the buzzing noise from the air pump was really annoying. So it basically had to be given its own room on the lower level of the house, with a bunch of grow lights for the multiple buckets. I was not a fan.By contrast, I think the Foody system looks quite nice, especially once it's full of plants. And it takes up relatively little floor space, so it can sit in a south-facing bay window in the main part of our house without getting in the way. The auto-rotation feature is fantastic, allowing us to take maximal advantage of the natural light and also simplifying the positioning of grow lights (I bought two 45-watt LED grow light panels, built a rough stand, and hung the panels one above the other so that they illuminate one whole side of the Foody). She's got plants in almost all of the 44 spots now, and all of them appear to be thriving.The only negative is that the noise of the running water is substantial. It's not an unpleasant sound at all (unlike the buzzing air pump we had before), but the vertical plastic reservoirs resonate as the water flows from one to the next, making a trickling/gurgling sound that is loud enough to be distracting when watching TV in the same room. The sellers are aware of this, and they included a timer-outlet along with the suggestion to have the water pump automatically turn off for a few hours in the evening. I was a bit nervous about having the water off entirely for hours, so we got one of those highly-programmable digital timers and now we have the water pump turn on for 1 minute ever half hour from 7pm to midnight. I suspect it would be fine to have it off entirely, but this has worked great for us so far.We've got basil, arugula, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and strawberry plants currently. Don't yet know how well the tomatoes and strawberries will do at producing food, but the others are all cranking.