I think i saw this on an infomercial at some point, but seeing in from Earthtech makes me want to believe it’s claims.

(although some of these badly photoshopped pictures do make me a bit suspicious, check out the lettuce, it has the same design in every picture!)

Well they say you should always eat food grown locally, but this product allows you to grow your own! This is the AeroGarden, a hydroponic, indoor, herb & vegetable garden that allows you to grow things like lettuce, tomatoes, and chili peppers, all without soil!

The garden uses seed kits placed in the garden. It has built-in full spectrum energy efficient lighting, micro-processor controlled watering and nutrient delivery, and a timer to automate lighting.

The AeroGarden claims that each seed kit produces about four months worth of vegetables, but also claims that you can begin harvesting your crop just 21 days after planting.

The AeroGarden comes with an herb seed pack, allowing you to grow cilantro, chives, Italian basil, red rubin basil, dill, mint and parsley. You can purchase vegetable packs separately to grow cherry tomatoes,  salad greens, petunia flowers, and chili peppers. Each additioal seed pack is about $20.

Sure, it’s fast, and it allows you to grow your own food, but the best thing about the AeroGarden? You know all your grown vegetables are organic. You will not have to worry about weeds, insecticides, or other poisons sometimes found in produce. You control the whole process!

(Hook this up to the Portable Power Pack for 100% green vegetable growing!)

The AeroGarden sells for $199 (sale: $148.95!) from Earthtech.

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We’ve covered dozens of solar powered gadget chargers in the past, all charging your popular gadgets through USB cables or other special cable. So far however, we haven’t seen a solution to provide an actual outlet.

The Earthtech Portable Power Kit is marketed as a gree way to charge your laptop, and it does do a great job of this. A fully charged battery will run a 25w laptop for about 6 hours.

It’s much more than just a laptop charger however. It provides both a 12V DC outlet, and a 115V AC outlet for charging any other device or appliance. TV, Phone, Computer, Radio, etc. All can be powered by the battery.

Here’s a list of examples of operating times when running off battery power:

Approximate Operating Times for 115 Volt Products:

• Cordless Telephone (5 Watts): 40 Hours Operating Time
• Home Security System (5 Watts): 40 Hours Operating Time
• Clock Radio (8 Watts): 20 Hours Operating Time
• Portable Stereo (10 Watts): 15 Hours Operating Time
• Flourescent Work Light (14 Watts): 12 Hours Operating Time
• 5” Color TV (20 Watts): 8 Hours Operating Time
• Laptop Computer (25 Watts): 6 Hours Operating Time
• Table Lamp (40 Watts): 3.5 Hours Operating Time

Approximate Operating Times for 12 Volt DC Products:

• Cell Phone (6 Watts): 36 Hours Operating Time
• Fish Finder/Depth Sounder (6 Watts): 36 Hours Operating Time
• Bilge Pump (36 Watts): 6 Hours Operating Time
• Portable Cooler (30 Watts): 5 Hours Operating Time
• Car Vacuum (85 Watts): 1.2 Hours Operating Time

Pretty impressive times!

This can be incredibly valuable for emergencies, or just a small way to offset some of your electricity usage to a more green source.

The Power Kit was assembled by Earthtech from two different products. You can buy these two individually or as the kit to save some money.

The Battery pack is the XPower Powerpack 300 Plus, which Earthtech sells for $139.00

The Solar cell charger is the Sunlinq Portable Solar Panel Charger which Earthtech sells for $409.99

You can get these both in the Portable Power Kit for $478.95 (sale price).

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Christmas might be a ways off still, but can you remember all those lights on at once? What a waste!

Luckily, Nigel’s Eco Store has stocks a solution. These are solar powered Christmas lights. Equipped with a solar panel, these lights will shine for 3 days off a fully charged battery.

Since these are solar, you won’t be hassled with outdoor wiring, massive tangles of wire, powerbars on top of powerbars, and even the risk of electrical shock by drawing so much power.

Each string will have it’s own power source, so there’s no need to run wiring around your yard. Since you’re not tied down by wiring, you could even create whole new displays of lights where you normally couldn’t get power. High atop that tree? That’s what I was thinking.

These lights, being solar, will charge themselves in the daytime, providing power at night from the battery. No more huge balls of powerbars, and no sucking electricity all night.

These come in red and yellow, and are a great way to green up the holiday season.

These Solar-Powered Christmas lights sell for about $45 (£22.49) from Nigel’s Eco Store.

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Well if that isn’t a terribly chosen name for a cool ecogadget, I’m not sure what is. Thankfully, the “Power Monkey” is cool enough to make up for it.

The charger does charging a bit differently than other charger’s we’ve talked about. It charges a battery pack which you can then use to charge your devices. You can still use the solar charger directly without the battery pack, but you’ll be thankful for a charged pack in the middle of the night when your iPod dies as well. 2 ways to charge your devices? Great improvement!

Additionally, this solar charger comes with almost any kind of connector you’d ever need, even USB to charge your iPod.

More information and photos after the break.

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