The Spider Mites Won.

After months of fighting, I'm taking down my entire hydroponic garden.

I stood by our bedroom windowsill, staring at my patio baby eggplant. Its once lush green foliage had slowly evolved into many smaller, yellowing leaves.

I took a closer look and a fine film of webbing criss-crossed between and around the leaves. It was everywhere. Tiny specks of critters crawled happily all over.

They’re spider mites. I’d been battling these little guys for weeks. Months ago, I fought back with zeal. Now, seeing the new webbing all over again, I’m just done with it all.

A few months ago, I first noticed the spider mites on one of our hydroponic windowsill eggplants. I isolated that plant into a different room and took it to the bathtub every few days to blast it with our showerhead water. It seemed to work for a while.

Somehow though, the spider mites spread. The second windowsill eggplant eventually got them too. I kept rinsing both. But later, I realized the water from the shower was draining into the hydroponic bins and messing with the plants’ water levels.

I switched over to spraying the plant with a handheld spray bottle. But this was less effective than using our shower.

Then, somehow they invaded the tomato plants in the living room. And the bok choy below as well. These plants weren’t even near any windows, so I have no idea how they spread. Maybe I should’ve been more careful. That’s when it started feeling like this was becoming too much.

The infestation was the most obvious problem, but I was already considering a shift. We’ve been anticipating changes in our household that will require more of our bandwidth, so I’d been thinking about switching to a lower-maintenance garden.

I grow all of my plants from seed, so I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get emotionally attached to them. My two tomato plants growing out of my Aerogarden Bounty became a year old recently. They had a good run. In spring of last year, I first started sprouting my eggplants from seed. We harvested well for a while, but my interest faded as our cooking never adopted eggplant as a regular staple. I started growing bok choy during the winter this year, so they were just about bolting anyway. The spider mites solidified my decision to take the whole setup down.

I can think of another time when I felt like I was starting from square one. In 2016 to 2018 when I was still running long-distance, I trained hard chasing a marathon PR. By the end of 2018 though, I burned out and took a two-year break. When I started running again in 2021, it seemed like a lot of the fitness had disappeared. But I approached training with different priorities. The same thing is happening with my hydroponic garden now.

The gardener I am now isn’t the same gardener as I was back in 2024, when I started growing my first lettuce ever out of mason jars. And the gardener I was in 2024 is definitely not the same as the gardener I was in 2020, when I was more focused on nurturing common houseplants. Although indoor gardens don’t experience seasons like an outdoor one, they still evolve to the seasons of our lives.

Now that Francis and I are home more and will be for a while, we’ve decided to focus more on one dedicated Aerogarden herb garden to supplement our increased cooking frequency. We’ll also set up the other Aerogarden Bounty we own to grow only arugula for its nutritional value. We may have three to six hydroponic bins of mizuna or leafy greens, but we haven’t solidified this yet. No more fruiting plants. We’re prioritizing lower maintenance and less variety, and most importantly, it’ll be more sustainable for what’s coming.

On Thursday, Francis and I cut down and emptied the last of our hydroponic plants. Our five-tier shelf sits empty and dark, though there is one bright spot: one shelf of growing microgreens. By the end of the whole process, I stopped feeling sad.

I reminded myself this isn’t failure. It’s just making space for version two. I still have the shelf and the grow lights. The system still works. What grows on it is allowed to change.