GYOstuff Hydroponics & Garden Supply

I stopped in here a few weeks ago for some organic potting mix. I found what I needed, and the prices were reasonable. The person who helped me was helpful and friendly, didn’t get his name. So I’m new to this gardening thing, and he gave me a few pointers for growing tomato plants. I even got a free cucumber plant. Thanks! The parking lot in the back is a plus too.

I don’t usually write reviews on Unilocal.I made this for the sole sake of the great experience I had with this store. I walked in knowing very little about, well honestly anything. I left with not only the product I needed but also alot of knowledge about how to grow and clone, etc which the guy at the desk, Eli, had no obligation to show me for free. He even did a hands on demo of cloning a plant for me. Eli is incredibly friendly and helpful and I left the store feeling great and immensely satisfied. They do not always have everything in store that is on their site, but they always have good if not better alternatives available and the prices are very fair.

Ordered hard to find fertilizer online. It was back ordered, they didn’t bother to notify me until I called. Finally they shipped it, to the wrong state and I had to file a lost item claim with the post office. Never got my fertilizer in time to use it or any refund. Don’t recommend ordering from them ever.

I recently moved in down the street and was stoked to see a garden store down the block that specifically handled unconventional gardening, the kind that one does in an apartment. I’m wary of those big giant garden centers that make you want to buy every flower and fountain and curse your limited balcony space. Guilt free gardening, I was in. I could go in and browse without feeling like I needed a 3 acre yard and greenhouse. I swung by on my way home the other day to pick up a second window box and some sprouted herbs, mainly mint, chives and oregano. Three strikes! They had seeds for chives and oregano, but no sprouted plants ready for potting. They had some basil out back but the herb selection was severely limited, according to the gentleman behind the counter. And… They had no mint of any kind. The employee helping me said: «Maybe we’ll get some mint seeds next year.» Ya think? I don’t know, but mint seems like a no brainer to me. But i’m not a garden store owner so… Yeah. I took the chives and oregano and a few other seeds and will do the germinating myself. I was not hugely impressed with the selection or the customer service. Oh, and the window boxes I wanted, Nope, miss there too. They don’t carry those. I’ll probably be back because it’s right by my house if I need plant food or something like that, but over all, the experience was not what I hoped it would be. I had such high hopes! Maybe I’m slightly off the mark, though. It looks like they specialize in just the plant foods, hydroponics, gro lights, specialty items like that. So for that, they’d probably be exactly what you need. But since I don’t grow cornfields on my kitchen counter or organic salads in my linen closet, just the average herb garden on my balcony railing, I am now off to hunt down the items I originally came in for. Here I come, big giant guilt-​inducing garden centers!

I ended up at this place by accident. And what a great accident it turned out to be! I happen to be driving along looking for another place that sells earthworms for composting. Never found the other place, which is fine because this spot had what I needed :-)
GYOStuff is an interesting store. I wasn’t sure what I was going to see exactly before I went inside. If you’re not sure call before you go. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable about the products like some of the other reviewers mentioned.
Note: You buy a «kit» through them and the worms come in the mail. Mine arrived in 2 days from CA. If you list your email address on the form, the online company will send you a tracking number.

Great selection of pots, seeds, herb starters, and a very knowledgeable (and super nice!) staff member who took lots of time with us. Prices were excellent and you get to avoid shopping in a place like Home Depot. Organic everything, which is important to us. Will definitely go back for all of our roof top gardening needs in the future.

GYOstuff is a very interesting store — very unique, that caters to a pretty niche market as it specializes in trying to help you grow your own food in your yard or indoors. It’s a fairly new concept to most and can be achieved pretty easily if you have the right equipment, technique and execution. From bell peppers to tomatoes and classics like basil, cilantro and mint. You can and should be able to do it on a pretty small (or large) scale with a bit of money and work.
Personally, I went there because I wanted to take my basil plant to the next level. I wanted to be able to get a much higher yield out of the plant and also made sure that it survived the harsh, sunless winter.
However I had some budgetary constraints and instead of getting anything fancy, the staff recommended this thing called a Grobal (made in Japan) which enables one to easily store and maintain plants of various sizes. The Grobal was pretty affordable, came with nutrients — although we had to buy more since — and has different sizes which is nice in case you have smaller or larger plants. The staff took the time to explain how it worked and fast forward nearly a year and our basil is absolutely striving! To a point where our guests often go home with some. It’s fantastic and knowing that we’ll never have to buy basil at the grocery store again is also kind of nice since ours is fresher and better!
But in case you were more serious and really wanted to get into hydroponics, they have everything else that you might need. From growing lights to drip systems, fans, seeds, you name it! Just don’t go in there thinking that they’ll help you try to grow anything illegal.
The staff is very knowledgable, friendly and their store is actually pretty neat. I definitely recommend it and will be back for more Grobals in the future so I can expand from just basil to cilantro, mint and possibly tomatoes.

This place saved my indoor potted improved Meyer lemon tree. I desperately needed an indoor light to keep my lemon tree alive in my dark like a cave apartment. I also needed a light that wouldn’t suck electricity like crazy and the real sticking point was: It had to look good in my living room. Every hydroponic store I called in Connecticut recommended enormous metal halides that needed a separate ceiling mount, oh, and probably a fan. And would look super ugly. I’m glad I waited to see what the GYO ladies could do for me. The two ladies working the floor were the perfect mix of laid back and helpful. They recommended the Grow UFO for me right away and even took it out of the box and plugged it in so I could see how strong the light was. They talked me out of spending more money on a ceiling hanger (the light came with one that was good enough). Lastly, two months later, my lemon tree is not only surviving the move indoors, it is LOVING this light! Thanks ladies!!! I want a gyo t-​shirt!

I think hydroponics is neat, and I’ve been curious about it for a while (I love and want to grow watercress, which loves water, though by the looks of some of their product labels and décor, I get the sense that their typical customer grows, um, other things). I want to like this place. But my experience at this store was short of pleasant. I felt that the employee who assisted me was frantically trying to sell, sell, sell. It was as if she’d been practicing her sales lines and everything that came out of her mouth was scripted. Other than resulting in an uncomfortable interaction, it also made it hard for her to answer my questions with directness; everything was wrapped in a sales pitch.
Also weird: While there, I remembered that I’d read somewhere that fish fertilizer was good stuff, so I asked if they carried that. She said «Of course!» and went over to a shelf. It wasn’t there, so she went over to another shelf, and another and another. And then grabbed a bottle and said, «Here it is: made out of kelp.» Yes, kelp and fish are both aquatic… but kelp isn’t fish. It’s a plant. I asked again if they have fish fertilizer, to which the employee responded by trying to sell me a multipack of 6 or so different plant nutrients (none of them fish) which was well out of my budget. I declined, and said that it’s ok if they don’t have the fish stuff. «We do have fish fertilizer,» she said. «Do you mind if it has other stuff in it in addition though?» I said I did not mind and she handed me a bottle (and delivered a rehearsed monologue about its virtues). I read the ingredients, and it was something funky like worms and bat poop. When I pointed out that it has no fish, she said that it’s better than fish.
Whatever, I am fine with bat poop (hey, maybe it’s way better than fish, who knows) but to clarify, I asked, «so do you NOT carry fish fertilizer or are you just out?» to which the guy at the counter responded with «Would you LIKE us to carry it?» and the woman who was helping me went off on a rant about how Miracle Grow is evil and uses fish so they don’t or something to that effect. I felt a little bad, but I had to stop her mid-​speech and ask her to charge me, since I only had 15 minutes in the meter.
Bottom line, I don’t terribly care about the fish fertilizer, but I wish she’d had the professionalism to admit that they didn’t carry it, or were out of it, or whatever the case. «I’m sorry. I made a mistake. We don’t have it (now/​ever), but I can recommend an alternative product» would work better than handing me kelp and saying that it’s fish, trying to «upsell» me to a (fishless) kit, pretending bat poop was «fish with additional things in it,» etc.
I’ve only gone in once, so it may just be that one employee. The guy at the counter seemed chill and polite, so I’ll give them another try I am sure. But I do worry about how a store like that will survive without competent customer service when all the stuff they sell is available cheaper online.
Torn between 2 and 3 stars (giving a 3 so that my review doesn’t totally kill the rating, since there are only a couple reviews up at this time).

This is a pretty amazing store. I walked in only knowing next to nothing about hydroponics except that it uses water, I walked out fully educated and realized I could start an indoor tomato growing operation inside my house for around $ 500. Although I’m sure the sky is the limit on that though. The staff was really friendly and showed me and my friend all around the store. Pretty neat stuff in here, I took a photo of one of the indoor systems.