Learning what to build by talking to gardeners

We had a lot of fun at the OKC Home & Garden show. We went there to help spread the word about the app, to get kids interested in gardening, and to help inspire people to start growing food. I had A LOT of conversations about growing food and began to notice a common theme among the topics. I have this huge list of features I want to add to our mobile app but I’ve struggled to decide what to work on first. Last weekend clarified the biggest challenges facing new gardeners and helped me focus my attention on the most important problems. Here’s what I learned from talking to people for 30 hours straight this weekend about growing food and the challenges they face:

1. Knowing when to plant things can be confusing, and telling you to start something “2 weeks before last spring frost” doesn’t make it much better.

I get it, knowing your zone, first froze date, last frost date, and trying to piece together what all that means can be confusing! Solving this problem is my #1 priority and I’m happy to report that I’m actively working on it! Soon you’ll be able to see specific planting dates based on your GPS location. I don’t have any time estimates on this yet. I hope to have more details for you on this soon. I’m also looking into doing things like helping you know when to water based on how much it’s rained near your GPS location as well.

2. It’s difficult to keep track of companion planting combinations

This was a problem we set out to solve with the first version of our application. We took a first shot at it, but we can improve. We are going to continue to expand our companion plants and we’re going to be adding new plants to the app every update. We’re also going to add information about which plant pairings to avoid.

3. How do you know which bugs are good or bad?

This is another problem we set out to solve with version 1. Right now we help you identify over 30 different garden pests and future versions will also include information about beneficial insects in the garden as well.

4. I want a garden like yours. Where do I start?

This is something I get asked more commonly than anything else. Last month Carrie and I started working on a new “How to Start” tab in the application that walks you through all the steps towards replicating what we’ve done with our backyard. We’ve put a lot of time into trying to make things as simple as possible and have broken it out into 7 steps with links to our favorite products that we’ve used in our garden. You should begin to see the new tab in the application as the update rolls out over the coming days.

I’ve got a whole list of items and I could go on all day, but those are the things I’m focused on for now. Thank you to everyone that came out to see us at the OKC Home & Garden Show. Meeting so many people excited about growing food gives me such hope and gives me inspiration to help you with your gardening journey by creating the most useful mobile application for people that want to grow food.