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…

 

Square foot gardening

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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The Good Seed Company

 

Now Let’s Get to the Root of Things!

Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the garden now that you don’t have to do much weeding?

That was my biggest beef in the first year, I couldn’t tell what was a weed

half the time I’d leave the weeds fine half the time I was pulling out things that should be pulling out things that should stay put

I get nervous, one year I dug up all Mike’s echinaceas he planted for me.

to gardening pros

they’rre all little green plants they don’t come with labels

some years chances are things will get left behind

pull out things you shouldn’t

that was my number one beef

I was super happy we were able to get th

What is your favorite activity to do in the garden.

eating all the vegetables

I love

• pulling a fresh carrot
• hosing it off and
• munching it in the garden

nothing tastes better

• sun-warmed strawberry

just being out there!

• just puttering in the garden

relaxing activity

don’t always get as much time as I would like

during planting and I’m selling seeding squares!

I do get out to the garden

and it’s nice to come back to zen

• be one with the earth and dirt

I love that! Since my audience is made up of entrepreneurial visionaries do you have any marketing advice or business advice for someone with a new product?

I’d say prepare for a journey

it won’t happen overnight

we came up with this about 31/2 years ago

we started right off wanted to get it [patented

it takes a while

time processes

to have my final finished 20 year utility patent

what you’re inventing

something that’s a plastic tool

everything costs money

if you want to get onto your entrepreneurial side

cheer you on it’s a phenomenal

not that you have to have everything off the hop

when I started

I had a personal page on FB

I had no other social media platforms

I need to learn how to use these

market

build a

kickstarter

indegogo

everything is an experience

it’s a learning its a step

take from every experience

you move forward

one educational experience

very much

pre garden

in a city school

teaching a younger grade

little guy teaching him about seeds and gardening

come from the grocery store

everybody knows that

really

oh ok

What is the best gardening advice you have  ever received?

just do it

it’s so good for you on so many levels

doing the headless chicken doing this task

that task

we are exhausted

just getting out into the garden

so calming

good for stress

anxiety

mental health

physical health

fresh food

nothing but good things come from gardnign

didn’t know what we were doing

barrier to entry

not quite sure you know what your doing

do it and try it

good for you on all levels

encourage people to garden

raise your

A favorite tool that you like to use?

If you had to move and could only take one tool with you what would it be?

I’m all about hands in there.

I don’t even wear gloves

hands in the dirt

I have a couple of cedar boxes that I had made so

we had to move form one home to another

cedar boxes that I use

between the 3 I have 14 square feet of space

I pull a lot of food out of there

I have them on my back deck

back onto green space

a lot of 4 legged and feathered friends to visit

having the garden boxes on the deck works better keep them coming into my families mouth

planning on a  bigger

have that misconception

to get your money’s worth energy

share the bounty

neighbors who will enjoy

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

vegetable stir fry some rice or noodles

whatever I pulled out of the garden

when we do the lettuce

chicken cesar…

I have found using the cedar boxes has removed the insects

diatemaceous earth

deters a lot of insects

if you get the food grade it’s good for us as humans

food grade bag

one thing

less water

when you water it all gets taken into the roots

you don’t have nearly the same amount of water

obviously have different water restrictions

nice knowing that we do’t need as much

A favorite internet resource?

I like to jump around on pinterest

in marketing I am always discovering

new sites and different approaches

very educated

I wouldn’t say I have a favorite in particular

Im partial to square foot gardening

a lot of amazing info

people doing

www.seedingsquare.com

were’e also on different

facebook

instagram

pinterest

twitter

youtube videos

more out there

I do what I can

as I come across them

love it when people come on
people send their pictures

share with others…

A favorite reading material-book, mag, blog/website etc you can recommend?

Square foot gardening book

cover to cover

Final question-

if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

You know if everyone took it upon themselves to do it on their own

small garden box

a few vegetables themselves

it would take a lot of pressure off the systems that are in place

if everyone picked up a trowel and grew a few veggies on their own

I think that would help

I like kidsgardening.org

they’re a non-profit about teaching children…

Do u have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden?

Just try it. It is gardening we put a seed in the dirt and water it its gonna grow

no one is

give it a try

if you haven’t done it before

give it a try

it’s an amazing experience you get so much out of it can

How do we connect with you?

www.seedingsquare.com

join us my biggest social media

at theseedingsquare

do a lot of giveaways

tips and tricks

promotions

use it as an educational platform for people

jokes

home remedies

what have you

facebook page

seedingsquare

website

most broadcasted

welcome encouraging people to send questions

guaranteed others

post them out there

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