PlantHome troubleshooting

At Own Greens we love to hear about our customers’ experiences with using the PlantHome. Regularly we receive nice pictures in which customers show their freshly grown vegetables and herbs or show how they have incorporated the PlantHome in their interior. Unfortunately, we sometimes also receive messages from customers whose growing process does not run smoothly. Of course you can always message us via the ‘contact’ page on our website and we will respond as quickly as possible and try to solve the problem together with you.  To get you started, we have listed the most common problems among our users in this blog and we explain how you can ensure that the growing process runs as smoothly as possible.

Non-germinating seeds

We regularly hear from our customers that their seeds don’t germinate. This is of course very unfortunate and shouldn’t be the case! If you have the idea that your seeds are not germinating, it’s a good idea to check the germination time of the seed you have planted. The germination and cultivation time of different types of herbs and vegetables can differ greatly. You can use the spicy burger mix from 2 weeks after sowing, but it takes 5 weeks to grow a head of butter lettuce. You can find the germination time and total growing time on the flyer that you receive with your plant cups or plant pads.

Of course it can also be the case that your seeds don’t germinate well after the mentioned germination time. If this is the case, it’s important to check if there are other factors that prevent your seeds from germinating. Firstly, it’s important that your seeds get enough water: make sure you fill the growing bowls with water to about 1 cm below the rim. When using plant pads, it is important to check whether the pad actually gets damp. If this is not the case, you have to add some more water. Also make sure that you’ve added two mineral pills to the water and that you use the setting in which the LED light burns for 20 hours a day.

Have you applied all these tips but are your seeds still not germinating? Be sure to contact us via the website and if we can’t do anything to solve the problem, we will make sure that you receive new seeds.

Lack of space

Some of our customers have said that they find the space in the PlantHome a bit limited, because there is only room for four growing bowls. Especially when you have several fully grown plants, the PlantHome can become a bit cramped and it is possible that newly sown plants don’t have much room to grow. In this case it can be useful to place fully grown plants outside of the PlantHome, for example on the windowsill. Fully grown plants do not necessarily need 20 hours of light and continue to grow slowly even with normal daylight. This way you can create space in the PlantHome for new plants. You can even choose to purchase an extra set of growing bowls via our webshop, so that you can fill the PlantHome with new plants even if you have several fully grown plants.

Flies

Because our PlantHome has an opening at the back, it is possible that your plants will attract flies in the summer. We can imagine that you don’t really like having flies in your living room or kitchen and would like to avoid this. The best way to do this is to keep the room in which your PlantHome is located free of flies. To achieve this, you can, for example, place insect screens in front of the windows and doors and place fly traps in the room.