Comments: There is nothing like harvesting your own tomatoes in the depths of winter – and we know a thing or two about the depths of winter.

Grow tomatoes, herbs, salad greens, or even flowers on your kitchen counter, without dirt and without mess. Drop in the pre-seeded grow pods, add water, and the included nutrients, and then – as Mother Nature requires – wait. The AeroGarden tells you when to add water and nutrients, turns the grow lights on and off automatically, and produces real food more than twice as fast as plants grown in soil.

The AeroGarden uses NASA-tested aeroponic technology to grow plants in water, nutrients, and air. This dirt-free method suspends the plant roots in air within a highly oxygenated growing chamber with 100% humidity. The computerized system uses high-efficiency lighting and a quiet, low-maintenance chamber that provides more oxygen to the roots.

Each AeroGarden model comes with a starter seed kit, but you can order tomatoes, herbs, peppers, green beans, lettuces, and flowers individually or in a huge variety of mixes. The Gourmet Herb Seed Kit, for example, includes Italian basil, purple basil, chives, dill, mint, parsley, and thyme. These seed kits are not without cost, but neither is the too-often flavorless produce filling the shelves of your grocery store – and you will know exactly where a little (at least) of you food came from.

The one issue we had is that our tomatoes would not ripen, and we were getting very disappointed. After a few calls to the company, the answer became clear. As frugal Mainers, our programmable thermostats kept turning down the heat at night, and tomatoes need ample warmth as well as light to mature. So we either had to keep the heat up overnight in our test kitchen or move the AeroGarden to a smaller room that we could keep warmer.

It's certainly not like getting a puppy, but you can't just plug it in and forget about it, either. The AeroGarden takes a little tending, but, again, growing tomatoes with real flavor while the snow covers the ground is totally worth it.