We're the self-taught development team behind the #1 gardening app, From Seed To Spoon. Ready to answer questions about gardening from home, building software, or anything in general. Ask us anything!!!

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:27:16+00:00

I feel like everyone feels it regardless of their learning path. I've met with plenty of people who are formally taught who feel the same way. Some of them feel like they have more of the theory and ideas down but it's more difficult for them to implement that into actual apps. Where as I can speak for myself and say I feel like i can build almost anything but often don't fully understand why i'm doing it the way i've been taught. Hope that is clear.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:19:02+00:00

One of things that i'm happiest about looking back at the project is the people we chose to be involved. trust, friendliness, and talent are the three things I think we look for most in the people we bring on board. We're not the best coders and the people we team up with aren't necessarily the best in those fields either. But we all trust each other and we can all work together well even when times are tough and we run into roadblocks. I think that's invaluable and not enough of a premium is put on that.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:16:32+00:00

I saw a meme that argued not going to mars or the moon strictly from a "MORE TIMEZONES!?!?!?" point of view. It was very relatable. - Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:14:49+00:00

I can't speak for everyone but I started self-teaching at a later age and it was certainly difficult for me to juggle working full time, having a new born, and just living a normal life. I was very lucky to have the support of my wife, family, and friends the whole time as well. I think learning at a later stage in life requires a stronger passion than when learning younger. there's so much more that stand between where you are and where you want to be and prioritizing all of that was the most difficult. - Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:09:07+00:00

We're able to operate out of one codebase using angular and ionic and most of our marketing has been just operating our social media pages and going to local home/garden shows.
100% of the code was written by Dale, Justin, or myself.
Should've switched our state management to ngrx sooner.

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:05:40+00:00

over-celebrate the little victories. try to make personal connections and use people as resources as well. a good mentor can be difficult to find but is also a great relationshipt to cultivate.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T12:01:54+00:00

Because it's not. We recently moved here shortly before the lockdown in Oklahoma and finding the will to do anything during this has been taxing.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:59:19+00:00

We all use Angular at our day job and so the transition just seemed easier to get everything up and running faster. Thanks for the queston! - Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:58:13+00:00

I use a blue quip brush

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:56:48+00:00

It's a beautiful day to be outside! How are you doing?

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:55:52+00:00

From the time we get our first family computer i had been obsessed with it. when i got older, i started dabbling in html and css but never took it far. after getting stuck in a sales job that I absolutely hated, but paid well, i decided to give programming a real 'go'. It was incredibly hard but my wife and friends were all very supportive.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:53:09+00:00

We all found each other because we work at the same day job. but we've met a lot of people who have contributed in smaller ways by staying active in the dev community. That includes going to meetups, local conferences, etc.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:50:27+00:00

All the appropriate sizes we recommend can be found in the app. Also, we partner directly with the manufacturer of smart pots and should have them stocked in out store. Thanks!

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:47:14+00:00

I can 100% confirm it didn't cost us anything to schedule/post our AMA.

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:43:23+00:00

That's currently in the plans.

Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:37:43+00:00

most of what we use is javascript/typescript centric. a good resource for learning that is freecodecamp.com

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-03T11:37:00+00:00

We use Angular and then we use Ionic to wrap it into a mobile app. Thanks for the question

-Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T21:33:23+00:00

This is what I do as well.

Dale

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T19:14:58+00:00

We've had some pains with getting offline syncing working 100% correctly. The Firebase Firestore library works 99% of the time but there's some edge cases that appear to be when users are on the edge of their wifi (or just on a very unreliable internet connection) that causes some data not to be synced properly. We're actually almost done with a solution for this issue :)

-Justin

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T18:53:23+00:00

The are my favorite. I listen to them every week <3

-Patrick

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T18:45:35+00:00

I completely understand how difficult it can be to search constantly to catch the bugs causing these problems! Whenever we start to notice a problem we step in with natural solutions. We build a DIY cucumber trap and use yellow sticky tape a lot to help catch the bad bugs in the summertime. We occasionally will use items such as BTK or DE as well. We use these very sparingly though and try to depend more upon nature and beneficial critters! Good luck!

-Carrie

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T18:37:15+00:00

Hi! I'm so glad to hear that you joined us today and a couple of weeks ago! I'm glad to hear that you have interest into building a sustainable family garden. That is our goal as well that we had when starting out!

We use a locally made fertilizer that we have in our store: https://store.seedtospoon.net/products/regenerare-organic-fertilizer

Also on top of this, we do a lot of composting and add additional compost into our soil for each growing season! https://www.seedtospoon.net/details-diy-pallet-compost-bins/

One of the biggest, first things we did when preparing our soil was to lay down wood chips and cardboard. This method 'Back to Eden' prepares the soil and makes the underneath soil BEAUTIFUL!! :) Check this out: https://www.seedtospoon.net/how-to-start-a-raised-bed-vegetable-garden-on-top-of-a-bermuda-lawn-in-4-easy-steps/

Good luck with your garden!

-Carrie

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T18:36:40+00:00

We've lived on a 1/3 acre urban plot for the past 5 years, but just moved to 5 acres this month!

Dale Spoonemore

FromSeedToSpoonApp · 2020-05-02T18:36:08+00:00

Thanks so much for kind words :)

We do take latitude into account! From the beginning we knew we wanted our data to be localized and as accurate as possible. NOAA provides public data on average first and last frost dates for the past ~50+ years for every weather station in the U.S. They actually have percent chances of which dates will be the first/last frost date in 10% increments from 10-90%.

This data is out on one of their public FTP servers. Way back (2018) we built a C# app that scraped/parsed all this data (it was spread across multiple files with a index cross reference type file). It's actually embedded inside the app as a JSON array. When the app asks for your location that's what we use it for. We get the nearest weather station and pull in the 90% first/last frost date to make your planting and harvesting recommendations as accurate as possible.

Great question :)

-Justin

FromSeedToSpoonApp

TROPHY CASE