Introducing Vitisio: helping gardeners get the most from their veg patch
This year, I finally did something I’d wanted to do for a long time: start a veg patch. As anyone who has ever grown anything will know it’s an incredible process.
I will forever remember the day the peppers finally started to sprout. Or those supermarket visits where I knew I didn’t need to buy herbs I had in the garden. Or perhaps most memorably, the end of summer, when our tomato plant produced dozens of cherry tomatoes each week.
But for all the successes, we had many failures. Peppers, which shrivelled away and sage plants that went white and wilted. Notably, a tomato plant which produced a tenth of one immediately next to it did.
The problem I found was the lack of knowledge and conflicting advice. One book told me to water ‘lightly and frequently,’ while a relative suggested ‘heavily but only every few days.’ Another friend warned that aubergines were a pipe dream. And another friend who lives just down the road managed to produce half a dozen cherry tomatoes, while we managed nearly 100.
Gardening advice is given as anecdote (I put a bucket of water on the plants and it worked) or with broad generalisations (you can’t grow aubergines in London). Yet the conditions for growing can fluctuate so much just within one’s own garden, that the idea of offering advice to others seems hard.
Introducing Vitisio
We want to help gardeners get the most from their veg patch.
I discussed these problems at length with Rich Murray, a product designer and developer friend. A gardener too, he had suffered many of the same problems I had.
Both being tech-focused, we quickly set about trying to find a tech solution. We need to identify variables which affect growth, and ways to target those.
We are building an unobtrusive system which will sit in your patch and measure the most important signs. It’s designed to be discreet and will measure moisture, feed, and overall health of your soil. These measurements will be sent to an app, and you will then receive guidance based on what you’re growing.
We want it to be as cheap as possible to get into as many hands as possible. We realised that if we had loads of people using it, the data would help give even better advice to gardeners everywhere.
This is a learning process for us both, which is why we’re working with a University of Cambridge postdoctoral researcher. His speciality is in plant biology, and will be helping us understand what the best conditions are.
From speaking to friends, those who had little or no success have been disheartened. They have yet to have the pleasure of eating their own tomatoes which they’ve seen grow from seed through to crop.
The plan is that each morning you will get a status on your garden, with notes of where might need more attention than others. Perhaps it’s a corner which requires some extra help because the soil isn’t as healthy. Perhaps its a recommendation for a polytunnel because the temperature hasn’t been consistent enough. Or at its simplest level, a notification that those tomatoes are getting thirsty again.
We’ll be using this space to update you on progress, but in the meantime, we need your feedback. We need feedback about what you like to grow and your frustrations and overall thoughts in general.
If you like the sound of what we’re doing: head to vitisio.com and give us your email address, or fill in our research survey (it takes about three and a half minutes).
