Did you know you can grow big plants without dirt?

I didn’t either, until I got this for Christmas:

 

There’s no soil but there is a power adaptor.  It may not use dirt, but it uses electricity!  ;)  So it’s not energy efficient, but it’s kind of cool anyway.

According to the instructions…

… it does something cool with magical water to make plants grow.  I say magical because you add a mysterious liquid to a gallon of distilled water to add to the grower.  Here’s to hoping it’s approved by Health Canada (or the FDA) because I’m planning on eating my plants.

Yeah, it kept getting stranger the more I moved along in the set-up.

I picked spinach to grow!  Plants I can eat are better than plants I can’t.

I had to soak that brown strip of foam with the magic water and put it in the top of the growing machine.

The little tiny spinach seeds are inside the foam.

I put the top back on and plugged it into the wall only to be surprised by the sound of constant dripping water. 

It never stops!  Apparently it’s “microjets” that need to give the seeds the perfect amount of water.  Well, I’m already failing at this project because you’re supposed to use a timer.  I’m not buying a timer to grow spinach.  That’s wrong.

What else is wrong is having a plant container that’s making me have to pee.  I’m not sure how long I can stand that sound before I unplug the thing and resort to – gasp! – using dirt and planting spinach outside.

In a few days, the seeds should sprout.  I’ll update the progress of the soon-to-be-eaten spinach growing out of a piece of foam, soaked in a nameless diluted liquid, plugged into the wall, making sounds.

Can hardly wait!