The Chia Herb Garden looks like such a neat little Christmas gift. Although, who can handle listening to that annoying infomercial every Christmas season...Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia! Between that and The Clapper, they drive me bonkers. Well I got the Chia Herb Garden for a gift not too long ago... Then I saw that old [tags]chia-herb-garden[/tags]infomercial the other day and I thought I better do a review on this! You'd figure that planting herbs would not be rocket science..right?? What a neat concept. You can grow six different fresh herbs in the comfort of your home. Any time of the year. Unfortunately the reality of growing them successfully is not quite that simple.
Chia Herb Gift
Chia Herb Garden comes with the following
- Includes a variety of six different seeds (Chives, Cilantro, Sweet Basil, Parsley,Dill, Sweet Marjoram)
- Instruction book
- Six plastic herb markers
- Four Chia growing sponges
- Liners and Saucers for four 3-inch Terra Cotta pots
I wish my Chia herbs looked like that!
Pros
- It comes nicely packaged in a box – easy to gift wrap.
- The instruction book is thorough and easy to follow the directions. Information is included on each herb. They even include sample recipes.
- The company will send you a free package of seeds if yours don't sprout.
Cons
- Some seeds don’t sprout.
- Some seeds sprout and then wither away before maturity.
- Some users (including myself) have reported mould appearing in the soil by the roots.
I wish I had a pretty picture to show you... but this is what my chives looked like after a couple weeks. Nice eh??
Chia Chives with Mould
My Chia Herb Garden Experience
The instructions state that after soaking the Chia growing sponge that it will expand to fit the pot. It didn’t really work that way. After soaking up the water they sponges retained their shape from the way they were originally packaged. It made them hard to fit in the pots..
Next the instructions say to place your seeds on top of the moistened sponge. Then you leave them to germinate. It took almost a month and only a few parsley seeds started to sprout. Even after following the instructions perfectly, I was having problems. How hard should it be for the average Joe to plant a few herbs! What is the problem here…
Chia Herb Garden Claims
The company claims that this is how long it takes before your herbs sprout.
- Cilantro and Chives in 14 days
- Parsley in 10 days
- Marjoram and Basil in 5 days
- Dill in 8 days
Final Thoughts
The Chia Herb Garden leaves so many of us perplexed. Not sure what is going on here. Maybe there are bad or old seeds in certain packages. How do you explain some herbs sprouting and others not sprouting. As well, some users have absolutely no luck with getting anything to sprout. Others at least get two-thirds of their seeds to sprout but all or everything ends up dying. Overall my opinion is to avoid this product. It’s a really good concept but it doesn’t seem to work for the vast majority of consumers. Those few who did have success really enjoyed the product.
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