Shownotes
Here’s the RAW episode of my interview with innovative Seeding Square inventor Jennifer Pratt! I edited while driving today so the show notes are a bit raw to say the least. And I cut out a few major mess-ups in the audio but other then that it’s just live!
Benefits of Seeding Square
- Simplifies planting process
- Save money on food bills
- Can double or triple the harvest
- Optimizes & organizes garden space
- Weeds are fewer & easier to identify
- Gives depth accuracy for seed holes
- Plants grow in beautiful uniform grids
- Planting is done quickly
- Great for teaching kids & new gardeners
- Spoon & funnel great for kids & seniors
Features of the Seeding Square
- Color coded for simple planting
- Space is optimized for each plant type
- Leaves perimeter impressions in the soil
- Magnetized to the Wand/Spoon
- Small profile for easy storage
- Comes in a reusable storage bag
- All materials used are RoHS compliant
Tell me about your first gardening experience?
Actually I grew up in Alberta, my mom always had a vegetable garden
I was a big fan of
- the peas
- the carrots and
- the strawberries
She liked that!
as an adult I didn’t have a garden
I was very career focused
- time to put in our own,
- dug out a piece of the lawn and
- put in our own garden
had a lot of fun
in the end
all these little sprouts started coming up
didn’t know what was a weed and
We had a good time but didn’t grow as many vegetables as we had hoped
So we do have the family gardening background!
I know listeners are going this woman has the answer to my prayers because I’ve had that problem!
Do you want to tell listeners what is a seeding square they’re probably like what is a seeding square?
What happened is
after our first year we decided we’d be a little more systematic
we went into our local
whatever tool there is to make gardening simple
- to simplify the process of growing your own food in the background
hunting around on social media
came across square foot gardening
really liked the spacing system that square foot gardening has
x number of plants per square foot
in our case we didn’t have a garden box
- you lay out a grid formation
- poke x number of holes
didn’t have the set up to put in this whole grid set up
we ended up making a whole bunch of spacing jigs based off the square foot gardening
grew so much food it was unbelievable
if they don’t know of square foot gardening
- it’s high yield gardening
- it’s being spaced and optimized and utilized
- perks is that you don’t get weeds
- harvest
we couldn’t believe how much food!
My husband said:
“I dropped the ball and you have obviously been on it!”
I was just gonna same thing
- plants were still small but
- once your plants get a little bigger
- you don’t get a lot of weeds
- our jigs got super high yield
- low maintenance
- new gardeners
kept having friends and neighbors
your garden looks amazing
everything with jigs
everything comes in laser beam straight rows
makes weeding a non-issue
such little time
so obvious it takes no time
our ahha moment came because we had all these different jigs
Friends and family
One square foot Jig
and stacked them all together and realized none of the wholes were overlapping each other. We thought if we could color code this we could combine all the jigs into one unit and we could offere this to teh world!
Growing food should be something everyone should be able to do and it should be simple to do! And we could help others like we helped us!
What’s a jig? is it paper? metal? Wood?
we had some made out of wood
1/4 inch thick and a foot by a foot
what extra features can we add to make it more user friendly
edge
leaves and impression
takes away the need for stick and strings
spacing for Square Foot Gardening without the need of sticks and strings
we said ok, trying to figure out depths of the seeds
- how deep does it need to be
- made this little wand
- depth measurements
at the end of it
there’s a little spoon
That was the other things all these seeds going places they shouldn’t
Scoop
little scoop lets you get seeds out of the package
holes are small for getting the seeds in
Funnel
that clicks into the funnel
put them into the holes
it’s so user friendly there’s lots of kids using it in schools and we’re just thrilled it’s fantastic!
we’ve also found too that seniors fine motor skills can be difficult
Seniors are also having success with it because their dexterity can be fading…
Mel Bartholomew is a civil engineer, but he passed just shy of 2 years ago
We came up with everything his premise
- high yield gardening
- utilizing all our space
- we got our premise from
did our crowdfunding to raise funds to make the product and molds.
Mel Bartholomew we reached out to in our process of bringing seeding square to the world
hope for the best
marketing is a process
I was at the grocery store and ironically I was buying produce and my phone rang he was like hi this is Mel Bartholemew he loved it the concept that could bring spacing and simplify the process and in talks in how to integrate with his process
it is nice to know it gave his seal of approval
has been around for quite a while
working in a small space
the amount of produce you can get
seeding square
2 different approaches but same premise.
Isn’t part of it some companion planting about what works together.
We actually made on our website we have obviously lots of pictures and everything
the seeding square comes with the color coded planting guide
On the website you can print off the instructions
in case the planting guide gets wet as tends to happen
companion planting guide chart
There is also the companion planting guide chart reference tool
see what plants are good beside each other
want to know why what’s good together
A quick reference tool
want to know what’s good beside each other
make it just that much easier.
That’s another thing I hate carrot seeds for there’s the inevitable carrots. Also in the beginning you end up squishing things that create an overgrown jungle.
Yes, things do end up like a jungle. This is high yield gardening.
compact
this is truly the spacing that the plants thrive
And it works like in Texas or Alaska…
Yes completely
2 different climates
It is planting a garden not rocket science!
It’s your garden so use it how it works for you.
I was looking at your FAQ’s
6.) Will I get as many vegetables out of my garden if I use a Seeding Square? Yes! In fact you’ll get 2-5 times the harvest as compared to traditional row gardening. If you get more than you bargained for … Share the wealth! I bet you have some friends, family and neighbors that would love to help you out with your fresh home-grown garden bounty.
I like that.
It truly simplifies it. I maybe would have called it Gardening for Dummies
Makes it simple for anyone regardeless of expereience or age level.
Now when you started out with these rigs you had all these diffrerent ones for each vegetable.
how it works
there’s 4 different spaces.
a big orange hole that’s for larger plants if oyou look on the guide that’s for bigger plants like the brocolli or brussell sprouts.
Look on the chart and see lettuce is in the blue box
Each press of the square only planting one type of vegetable
That’s one thing…
I’ve seen a lot of new gardeners who plant every hole in each press but that’s not how it works, it ends up being plant ware fare
each press you are only planting one type of vegetable
mini square foot gardens
square foot of
- lettuce
- you want to do a row
- next one is carrots
- peppers
companion chart is checked
patchwork quilt
it works well for rotation gardening different plants have different growing time
quicker or slower rate of maturation
That’s what I was wondering now it’s making sense to me
carrots are gonna call dibs on their square foot for the 60-90 days it takes them to do their thing,
vs
radishes or lettuce it’s rapid fire you put them in pull them out a few weeks later.
even increases yield more
as soon as you pull out your square foot you can turn around and plant it with whatever is next on your list!
keeps all of our garden being productive all season long!
It’s gonna go great with my garden planner!
Yes they’re companion products for each other!
That’s what was getting to me! I never knew what was a weed.
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