Auk Mini 2 Indoor Smart Garden Review: Better Where It Counts

Attractive design, present with much colour options. Extremely casual to acceptable up and maintain. Can turn immoderate you want. New, little intrusive airy with an optional app and abrogation mode. Tomato-and-pepper kit with longer dowels disposable arsenic an add-on.

Lack of pump means perchance stagnant h2o (but besides 1 little nonaccomplishment point).

When Auk’s original Mini 1 herb plot deed the marketplace successful 2024, it touched connected thing that galore tabletop gardens had until that constituent failed to consider: If you’re going to springiness up that overmuch antagonistic oregon array space, you don’t privation it to beryllium for thing ugly.

Aerogardens and akin models look … fine, but you’re astir apt not going to spot 1 successful the inheritance of an Architectural Digest shoot. The Auk Mini filled that marketplace spread with its pairing of sleek Scandinavian plan and utility, transforming the run-of-the-mill herb-growing cognition into a speech piece.

When I reviewed the archetypal Auk Mini past fall, I loved that it allowed users to works their ain seeds successful wide disposable coco coir, an alternate to peat moss made from coconut husks. No proprietary pods, nary subscriptions, nary fussy app.

When I started investigating the brand-new Auk 2 earlier this summer, I wondered what caller features could perchance warrant a caller model. Turns out, determination was much country for betterment than I thought.

Same but Different

For the uninitiated, Auk (pronounced “owk”) is simply a Norwegian institution that released its archetypal garden, the Auk 1, successful 2021. Essentially a larger mentation of the Mini 1, the Auk 1 received mixed reviews online for its operation h2o reservoir and inconsistent airy and watering cycles. (In fact, a erstwhile WIRED manager tested it and became truthful frustrated that helium threw it successful the trash.)

The Mini 1 was a simplified mentation of the Auk system, with 4 oval pots acceptable implicit a 3-liter reservoir. Users could turn the included herb seeds oregon thing other they wanted successful the pots utilizing coco coir. It was simple, stylish, and effective.

The Auk Mini 2 features a fistful of updates, but possibly the astir disposable is that it comes successful caller colour variations, alternatively than conscionable achromatic and white. There are inactive the oak and walnut wood bottoms, but Mini 2 offers beech and ash alternatively of the Mini 1's cork. Espresso, sage, and terra-cotta colored tops present articulation the paper of offerings.

The Mini 2 besides sports bigger works pots and a 25 percent larger h2o capacity, contempt its wide footprint being 12 percent smaller than the original.

There is present also—and I admittedly had mixed feelings astir this—an app. Using the Auk Connect app isn’t mandatory; you tin inactive power the airy docket manually utilizing a fastener connected the airy bar, arsenic with the Auk Mini 1. The app doesn’t adhd much, but to its credit, it’s casual to acceptable up. You don’t adjacent request to marque an account. Just download it; unfastened it; and take your garden, which the app should already recognize. You’ll entree a leafage wherever you tin crook the airy connected oregon off, dim it, acceptable a clip schedule, oregon swap turn mode from “Herbs & Salads” to “Fruits & Veggies.”

Though the banal dowels for the airy barroom connected the Mini 2 are, arsenic connected the Mini 1, excessively debased astatine a maximum of 15 inches to easy accommodate taller fruiting plants similar peppers, Auk present offers a $39 Chili & Tomato Kit with longer dowels and a tray with larger pots (two alternatively of three). I person not tried it, but I’d beryllium amazed if it didn’t effect successful substantially accrued occurrence rates.

The app besides allows you to prime the Mini 2’s brand-new abrogation mode feature, which it calls Slow Mode. On Slow Mode, the Mini 2’s lights dim to dilatory down maturation and h2o absorption truthful that, if you request to measurement away, you’re not near with a messiness of overgrown parsley and bolting basil, arsenic happened erstwhile I tested the Mini 1.

Let There Be (Better) Light

For examination purposes, I grew the aforesaid herbs successful the Mini 2 arsenic I did successful the Mini 1: Italian parsley and Genovese basil. I besides utilized lone the included nutrients. However, erstwhile the parsley and basil got to harvestable size, I noticed thing different: These herbs were not leggy. In fact, they were lush and bushy, conscionable similar the selling photos, with astir nary of the floppiness that plagued my plants erstwhile I tested the earlier model.

This effect was, I learned, owed successful portion to the Mini 2’s caller airy barroom incorporating an optical lens strategy that allows the airy to not lone look little bright, but besides absorption much airy straight connected the plants. Because the plants present get capable light, they don’t person to agelong toward it—which caused overly tall, anemic stems successful the Mini 1.

I besides noticed that little of the airy spills implicit into the surrounding area—I kept the Auk Mini 2 connected a console array down the sofa successful my surviving room, and dissimilar the lights connected astir gardens I test, it wasn’t visually disruptive portion I watched TV. In fact, the airy was truthful visibly dim (in a bully way) that I astir forgot it was on.

Another imaginable contributing origin to the plants’ quality to enactment upright was the starter kit’s caller summation of a topper: a container of good gravel that forms a benignant of crust implicit the apical of the coco coir arsenic the substrate absorbs water. None of the herb stems struggled to popular through, though immoderate wore a small gravel chapeau for rather a while. Once they were large capable to basal upright, they stayed that way. The gravel was a small spot of a messiness to apply, but I don’t counsel skipping this step.

Best to Buy Now

Otherwise, the Mini Auk 1 and Mini Auk 2 are rather similar. They person an identical hostility assembly for the airy bar; the aforesaid small dot-studded water-level indicator instrumentality (seen above), wherever the reddish dot means the reservoir is empty; and they person the aforesaid nutrient schedule. (Two pumps of each bottle, “Grow” and “Flavour," per liter of caller h2o added.) There’s inactive nary pump, meaning the h2o successful the reservoir is stagnant, but it’s absorbed truthful quickly, wrong a fewer days erstwhile the plants are full-sized, that there’s not overmuch hazard of mold.

The Mini 1 retails for $259, and for now, the Auk Mini 2 is $229 ($249 for the espresso-and-walnut operation I tested). The Mini 2’s existent terms is simply a limited-time motorboat woody not apt to past past the extremity of the month. If you’ve been successful the marketplace for the Auk specifically, oregon conscionable an easy-to-maintain indoor herb garden, this is excessively bully a woody to walk up.

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