Aerogardens are an indoor gardening system that uses NO SOIL, and lets lettuce grow about 5 times faster than it would in standard soil.
There can be drawbacks, but there is no doubt that growing lettuce in an AeroGarden is one of the easiest ways to grow your lettuce.
Typically, to get a good estimate of yield, growers will count the number of a specific lettuce collected from their sample area, and then we will weigh to lettuce sample and calculate total yield from there.
If you have an average aerogarden, usually with grow lights on for 16 hours a day we can expect about 20 g of lettuce every 3 days. You should expect your first yield to take around 3 weeks.
From there, you should expect the lettuce to yield 2 to 3 times per week.
The amount of lettuce yield depends entirely on the size and number of pods of an aerogarden.
How Much Does A Lettuce Aerogarden Yield?
For optimal nutrient yield from your lettuce, you’ll want to put 2-3 seeds per pod, if you juggle the strongest, and remove the weaker seeds by cutting with pruning shears – leaving one seed per pod.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to thin the seedlings tier future harvesting, you simply put one seed in each pod.
| Type Aerogarden | Number of lettuces | Average yield per plant (No of leaves) | Total yield per aerogarden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aerogarden Herbie | 2 | 15 | 30 leaves |
| Aerogarden sprout | 3 | 15 | 45 leaves |
| Aerogarden Harvest | 6 | 15 | 90 leaves |
| Aerogarden Bounty | 9 | 15 | 135 leaves |
| Aerogarden Farm | 24 | 15 | 360 leaves |
What to Look Out For?
When growing lettuce in an Aerogarden there are many important factors to keep an eye on.
For example, if the nutrition solution is too concentrated, it can severely impact the yield of your lettuce crop.
This occurs if your water supply has a high concentration of mineral salts or your Seed Kit has grown for an extended time without rinsing and refilling the clean water.
Nutrient imbalance will often appear as browning or yellowing of the leaves, and if left unaddressed, the later option is demise of your plant.
You can expect yield reduction when insects invade. If you suspect you have insects invading your plants, raise the water temperature to 80 degrees Fahrenheit or more.
The way to do this is to put your AeroGarden in a sunny area, so the water will heat up and substantially reduce the overall concentration of oxygen in the water bowl.
This will reduce bacterial metabolic activities and either kill the insects or drive them away.
Lastly, Aerogarden produced lettuce is not immune to airborne plant disease that occurs with outdoor plants.
Important to note: Plant pathology varies greatly and there is no way to ever be sure which plant disease has attacked your lettuce without a plant pathologist comfortably inspecting the plant tissue under a microscope.
Factors That Can Increase Lettuce Aerogarden Yield.
One key component in how your crop performs is your harvesting technique.
For lettuce, you always want to trim the top inch or two as the lettuce grows:
- You can begin as early as three weeks, and the lettuce will grow quickly and continue to produce. You can do this type of method 2-3 times per week.
- When you do this, be careful to leave 2/3rds of the plant height behind. Trim only the top 1/3 of the plant.
Trimming out the larger leaves of lettuce will help you maintain the leaves as evenly as possible. Trim leaves as close to the base of the stem as possible.
Salad greens grow better in the winter than in the summer, especially lettuce.
Based on this concept, the plant is generating seeds in the summer and is, therefore, inedible during that time each year.
The optimal range of temperature is 55 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit for lettuce.
Because of that, it is best to position your lettuce Aerogarden in the coolest part of your home and not too close to sunny windows.
Additionally, it is smart to have a fan circulating the air while keeping plants cool at all times, and as much as possible stay away from heated areas.
AeroGarden cultivars have been tested and achieved quick germination and rapid growth in indoor gardening conditions, and your seeds will be ready to yield in 3 weeks.
Also, you may want to experiment a bit when deciding on your variety for growth in your location.
Some types of lettuce grow faster than others. You can pick Loose-leaf and butterhead leaf lettuces at any stage of growth.
The “heading” types of lettuce have a significantly longer yield period:
- For example, Crisphead lettuce will take around 70-100 days to yield.
- Romaine lettuce will take around 75-85 days to yield.
Lettuce grows well with bright light-ortho light from the AeroGarden light will suffice. Just remember that the more light you have, the more giant leaves get.
Go Easy with harvesting: prune away evenly, with the goal of never lifting the hood of your Aerogardens light. But, do not allow your lettuce to brown under the lights.
Final Thoughts
One of the salad greens, lettuce has also been tested thoroughly to ensure it is completely compatible with the AeroGarden system.
You will appreciate how fast and strong it grows, and not much to complain about. Learning how to prune it properly will give you even more yields.
In your aerogarden, you can grow lettuce year round. From the time you put the seeds in the not until harvest, you will likely to take approximately three weeks.
After finding lettuce, you should be able to regularly harvest and eat lettuce for about three to four months.