We Tried 8 of the Most Popular Indoor Gardening Systems

The Auk Mini is arguably one of the best-looking tabletop hydroponic gardens, available in two wood finishes (walnut or oak) and featuring a contemporary Nordic flair (read our full review here). Setup and operation are about as simple as it gets—plant whatever you'd like in the four pots, which are designed to work with coco coir (provided), fill the reservoir, add pumps of the provided nutrients, and plug it in. The lights will be on for the next 17.5 hours while the coco coir absorbs the enriched water through slots in the pot bottoms. Sprouting took just days, and I had fully harvestable cilantro, parsley, and basil—enough for pesto, even—within a few weeks. In fact, it's been almost three months since I first set up the Mini, and I am still harvesting these same herbs. They look worse for wear at this point, with floppy, dead stems and leggy parsley sprigs stretching every which way, detracting from the aesthetic, but I share some of the blame for not keeping up on my harvests.

Unlike other systems, the Auk requires no pH tests, pumps, tubing, or timers, and no futzing with an app. The only downside is the price compared to similar-sized tabletop systems like the LetPot (below), which have more plant slots, as well as the limitations of the light bar height. There is a light program for tomatoes and peppers (tap the button three times to activate), and Auk sells seeds for these, but in my experience, fruiting plants like these will grow well past a 17-inch light bar before they have a chance to flower. So it's probably best to stick to herbs only.

A bounty of Aerogarden dupes litter the “hydroponic garden” search pages on Amazon (full disclosure: I have used multiple Aerogardens in the past but not the most recent models), but LetPot is by far the most established. Instead of Aerogarden's max-size nine-pod tabletop models, LetPot's “Senior” features 12 holes for pods, and you can grow whatever you want, though the 16-inch light height will likely be limiting for tomatoes, peppers, or other fruiting plants. I used a packet of rainbow chard seeds, also from Amazon, and had immediate and sustained success. Even though the Senior is LetPot's second-largest model (the “Max” has 21 pod slots), I like that it's still about the size of a breadbox. In fact, I keep it right on my dining room table so it's easy to snip off a small bowl of baby chard for salads. (It would also be great for starting seedlings for other gardens, like the Lettuce Grow, above.)

To start, just fill the 5.5-liter reservoir with water and add 15 milliliters of each of the included nutrients, which come dehydrated but reconstitute to 100 ml; enough for six or so water fills. A water-level gauge on the top sticks up like a thermometer and is easy to view from across the room. There is an accompanying app in which you can set the 16-hour window you want for the 24-watt lights, but this feature did not work with my test model, despite my syncing and resetting it multiple times—I ended up having to turn the whole system off when I went to bed and on when I woke up, which admittedly wasn't ideal. However, this was the only issue I've had so far in the two months I've been testing the LetPot, which is otherwise exceedingly easy to use and maintain.

The LetPot comes with a pack of plastic inserts, peat plugs, and germination stickers, but they're not proprietary—many vendors offer the same kind for as little as 5 cents each. This, combined with the LetPot's already low price, makes this garden one of the few that is likely to pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time.

There are multiple sizes of the Rise 3 garden, but all of them follow the same design playbook: A metal frame with a cabinet hiding a water tank, multiple levels of shallow reservoirs, and an LED-light “roof" above each level. I tested the three-level version; each level's reservoir had a lid with varied numbers of pod slots adding up to 48 for the whole system, but you can buy lids with more slots to allow your garden to hold up to 108 plants. The water is pumped from the tank in the bottom cabinet and flows through each level's reservoir. The plant roots just spread out inside the reservoir.

The Rise has far and away the biggest capacity of any non-DIY indoor garden I’ve seen and would be more than enough to keep a large family in nightly salads for months. Overall, it's a pretty traditional form factor—in fact, I'm pretty sure I saw one of these in the corner of my college biology class. Since it's so large, assembly was a bit tricky, and vague instructions weren't helpful. However, Rise does come with a smart plug for the lights and pump, as well as an app that offers reminders on when and how to add water and nutrients and balance the pH.

Unfortunately, I didn't find out until after I had already set it up that the peat pods need to germinate first in plastic-lidded “nurseries.” My test unit didn't come with enough nurseries for the number of seed pods I had, so I had to improvise with shallow plastic containers, with the pods weighted to keep them upright in water. After a few days, I noticed the containers—all of them, including the provided nurseries—had begun to grow algae, and the black-plastic surface of the Rise trays was noticeably warm. I brought out my infrared temperature gun to test—the 195-watt LEDs paired with the black plastic had brought the surface up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. For reference, all of the other indoor gardening systems were room temperature, in the mid-70s.

Once the plants were grown, the temperature came down to something warmer than “normal” but more reasonable: 83 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, this is something to consider in terms of room placement and what plants might thrive. Over time, I noticed herbs and lettuce bolted faster in the Rise 3 than in other gardens, likely due to this heat, which also puts plants at risk for cases of root rot. I'm still a big fan of the Rise's form factor and its capacity, and I think it would be a first choice for heat-tolerant crops like tomatoes and peppers. In fact, the tomatoes I did grow in the Rise were notably bigger and better tasting than the ones grown in other systems. Also note that, unlike other gardens, the Rise 3's pump runs continuously, resulting in an audible splashing noise—if this bothers you, it may not be the best choice for small spaces.

“Like a coffee capsule machine, but for plants,” reads Click & Grow’s marketing copy. Sure enough, the Click & Grow Smart Garden's seed pods come in a Nespresso-evoking plastic three-pack with a tear-off cover. (Pods run about $3 to $5 each.) Put a nutrient-packed “smart soil” seed pod in one of the Click & Grow’s cups with the wicking bottom, fill the reservoir, and that’s it. In what was the most simple watering system I tried, a wick at the bottom of the cup will bring water up to the pods, and the roots stay in the cups. Plug it in, and the LED grow lights will stay on for the next 16 hours.

I tested the Smart Garden 9 with three pods each of lettuce, basil, and tomato plants. Overall, there are about 75 pods to choose from, including herbs, flowers, leafy greens like arugula, and vegetables. There is a Smart Garden Pro that connects to Wi-Fi and has app control, but despite the “smart” in the name, this is not that—there's no app needed or required for the non-Pro version.

All in all, this garden was refreshingly low-maintenance. A little bobber on one end tells you when the water level is low and needs a top-off simply by floating lower than the growing surface. That’s it. No adding nutrients or checking pH or worrying about pumps. It's also small, so you can plop it on a shelf or countertop.

At the same time, this was also the slowest-growing garden I tested. I had it set up the same week as the Gardyn, above, and had already been harvesting months’ worth of greens and vegetables by the time I got one Click & Grow lettuce leaf. One of my lettuce pods didn’t even sprout at all. After two months, I had harvested a handful of basil and lettuce leaves (literally, one handful), and the cherry tomatoes had grown past the lights without making a single flower. Meanwhile, the Lettuce Grow, which was started after the Click & Grow, had at least 15 visible tomatoes by that time. Still, this isn't a bad garden by any stretch, and it’s a viable option for busy people who are interested in growing something like flowers, where yields aren't a concern.

If you're looking to get in on the functional mushroom trend, or just like to eat and learn about fungi, this is an easy, out-of-the-box way to start your own indoor mushroom farming operation. In the vein of the other hydroponic gardening systems, this setup isn't for those who already know how to build a monotub/fruiting chamber with spare parts from the hardware store. However, if you've never grown mushrooms indoors before, especially harder-to-cultivate varieties like enoki or shiitake, the Boomr Bin takes out some of the guesswork. And yes, I did say “some,” as it doesn't come with paper instructions for the whole setup, just the mechanical components. There's a tub with a lid, filters, a hygrometer, a humidifier, and a fan to maintain airflow. Luckily, North Spore has a well-curated YouTube channel detailing just about anything you'd need to know, from setting up the bin (with substrate) to prepping fruiting blocks.

I've run the Boomr Bin through several harvests now, both times with fruiting blocks (North Spore sells them, but you can use any brands’). In a little over one week, I had more oyster mushrooms and lion's mane than I knew what to do with, and to my surprise, the blocks continued to fruit over and over and over again—friends and neighbors began avoiding me on the street or the grocery store, lest I stick them with another bag of fungus. The only periodic maintenance I performed on the Boomr Bin was making sure the humidifier didn't have a water plug blocking the fog, and that it hadn't run empty, though I only had to refill once a month or so. Note that water plugs can be avoided entirely by placing the humidifier below the bin.

Another pro tip: If you'd rather not deal with an automated setup, North Spore sells individual-block spray-and-grow kits ($30) that are also quite prolific, though the mushrooms will not be as large or as plentiful as in the bin.

Plantaform is “the world's first smart indoor garden that uses fog to grow plants,” according to the company's press release, and it has definitely garnered attention, winning an Innovation Award at 2025's CES. The “fogponics" technology, ostensibly building on NASA-developed aeroponics, delivers water and nutrients to plants' roots via an ultrafine mist.

We were certainly captivated by the futuristic look of the egg-shaped planter, but contributor Lisa Wood Shapiro tested it to grow lettuce (read our full review here) and found that not only can different types of plants not be combined (i.e., you can only grow lettuce at one time, or tomatoes, or herbs), the machine degraded her indoor air quality, as tested with an air quality monitor. Users are to add an included fertilizer mix to the water, with the resulting concoction being what's aerosolized in the container. Which, as Wood Shapiro found, was not airtight. She suggested the Plantaform's use in a basement or other space where air quality wasn't as much of a concern, but it's probably best to hold off on this one until Plantaform can work out some more kinks.