Customer Reviews

AeroGarden 9312-00B Deluxe Upgrade Kit, Black

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This worked great and was easy to swap on my old AeroGarden. Updgrading involved lifting the garden pan out, unplugging the old hood and removing it, snapping in the new one and plugging it in, and putting the garden pan back in. It is very bright and my plants are much happier with the extra light and extra space. Even if you don't need the extra height, you should still get this upgrade for the extra light.

The only thing bad is that this is offered in white and black, but not silver. My original AeroGarden is silver, so now the hood and base don't match. Fortunately it's not easy to tell that they don't match unless they're brightly lit from external lighting. The plastic piece that covers the top seems to be identical in shape and size to the old hood though, so I'm going to try disassembling and moving that piece over from the old hood to fix the color difference. I'll update my review with the results.

UPDATE 12/3/2009: I finally got around to swapping the cover from my old hood to get the colors to match properly. The swap wasn't too hard, but it wasn't trivial either. You have to unplug the coord from the hood and unclip the hood from the support arm using a small tab on the top of the hood. Then flip the hood onto its back and remove the bulbs (note that the new bulbs run pretty hot, so be careful) and you'll see a number of small screws. You don't remove the two on either side of the power connector but remove all the others you can see and the hood cover will then separate from the electrical assembly (there are two screws near the back-center of the cover kind of deep down -- watch for those as they're easy to miss).

The new hood is similar *except* there are screws on either side of each bulb socket -- don't remove those! Also, the two screws near the center of the old hood aren't present on the new hood so don't worry about them.

After they're both disassembled you just swap the plastic and put the screws back in, put the bulbs back in, clip the hood onto the arm and plug the power cord into it. The arm is still a little off color but nothing serious and it even looks a little like it was intended to be that way.

If you failed to get an AeroGarden Pro 200, as I did, this will upgrade your AeroGarden Pro 100 to the same stats as the Pro 200. Lets you grow full-sized veggies right in your home. Excellent value.