A fresh take on edibles

AS EDIBLES GARDENING CONTINUES to gain popularity, along with the demand for local and fresh fruits and vegetables, suppliers and retailers alike are coming up with creative ideas to promote their products. Instead of coming in the typical packet, seeds are finding new homes in lollipops and in pencils that are actually functional. Garden center retailers are also hosting events to celebrate home-grown produce and teach customers how to cook with the garden’s bounty.

Plant a lollipop

IN ORDER TO CULTIVATE FUTURE GARDENERS and encourage kids to eat healthy fruits and vegetables, sometimes putting a fresh, fun spin on gardening supplies can give them the boost they need. VeggiePOPS is one such company that is aiming to do this with its seed containers that look like lollipops. There are six different “flavors” of VeggiePOPS, each that contain three to five seeds for vegetables, including Swiss chard, radishes, cherry tomatoes, summer squash and bush beans. VeggiePOPS also contain an expandable germination medium and fertilizer. These lollipops are not to be enjoyed the traditional way — as the company states, “They taste better after they have grown!”

“Our whole goal was to make gardening as fun and as easy as possible,” says Cynthia Wylie, founder and CEO of VeggiePOPS. The other hope was to encourage kids to grow vegetables, and most importantly, eat them, she says.

“Millennial parents want their kids to be healthy,” Wylie says.

VeggiePOPS is actually a spin-off of an online gardening curriculum called Bloomers Island, a California-based company that produces content for children in elementary school. Wylie says they were getting requests from parents to offer more hands-on activities that would correspond with the Bloomers Island curriculum.

This led to a whole line of products that also includes LolliPOTS, which are growing containers made of recycled plastic bottles, and posters to help track the veggies’ growth.

The product comes with a header card to educate store personnel about the product. One way to market the product, besides social media marketing, is to have weekend planting demonstrations. Wylie says she has hosted events where she showed the kids how the planting medium expands when water is added. She then shows the children how to plant large seeds, like snow peas and beans, into the medium.

“It’s a taste of gardening,” Wylie says. “Invariably, what happens is there are a couple of kids in every class that become obsessed with it and those are the kids that you want to encourage. They could become [horticultural] majors in the next 10 years.”

More than a pencil

THOUGH GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD is considered eco-friendly, one product takes it a step further. The Sprout Pencil is a lead-free pencil made of biodegradable ticonderoga cedar with vegetable, flower and herb seeds contained in the top capsule. When the pencil is down to a nub, the capsule can be removed and planted. There are more than 12 different Sprout Pencils, including colored pencils for drawing.

The idea for the Sprout Pencil originated at MIT, where students were looking to create a sustainable product for children. The MIT students formed a company around their invention and then sold it to an investor in Denmark.

“For every tree that is used to make a Sprout Pencil, we plant another one,” says Ed Goldman, who is in charge of North American sales. “The nice thing about the Sprout Pencil is they don’t end up in landfills like other writing utensils.”

Cooking with fresh-grown crops

JIM GLICK, A PARTNER AT KEN’S GARDEN CENTER in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, was looking for a way to promote edibles at his garden center. Fall Creek Farm & Nursery approached him with an event idea: Chef and Author Jonathan Bardzik,  who is known in the industry for his work at AmericanHort, All-America Selections and Overdevest Nursery’s line of Footprints Edibles, could spend a day at Ken’s to help promote BrazelBerries, Fall Creek's  line of ornamental, compact blueberries and raspberries that can be grown in containers or in the landscape.

Bardzik worked the crowd during the daylong event in May, while preparing tasty desserts from the fresh blueberries and raspberries plucked from the plants. He was flanked on both sides by point of purchase materials as well as potted BrazelBerries, grown by Fall Creek Farm & Nursery in Lowell, Oregon.

“Cooking demos inspire customers to purchase by giving them a literal taste of the end results,” Bardzik says. “The other benefit of a cooking demonstration is that while I’m chopping and sautéing, I can talk about the benefits of BrazelBerries plants, and with blueberries simmering on the stove, it doesn’t feel like a sales pitch for me to talk about flavor profiles, growth habit and garden performance.” Those who didn’t purchase plants still went home with recipe cards with the BrazelBerries logo featured prominently on them to help promote interest later.

CHEF JONATHAN BARDZIK COURTESY: LAUREN FISHER PHOTOGRAPHY

Despite the chilly weather, the event was well attended, Glick says, and he would be interested in organizing another gathering like it.

“It was a real neat way to put the focus on a product line, something that was fun and interesting and it created a little bit of buzz,” Glick says. “It wasn’t a blockbuster event, but it was a lot of fun and it focused on a particular product line.”

Neil is a horticulturist and freelance writer based in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.