useful comes out it. The garden helps me out because there is always something new sprouting that keeps me in the moment.” Spoonemore works from home for an independent software company not connected to the From Seed to Spoon app. He has found that by working for an hour at the computer and then spending 30 minutes tending to the garden, he’s able to clear his mind and more easily troubleshoot problems he runs into with work. “In the past, if I had a problem on the computer, I would spend all day, and if I couldn’t get it done by the end of the day, you did not want to be around me. I was cranky and it would consume me,” he said. He said that bouts of depression can get worse when he’s not eating well, which is why he likes to garden. His own relationship with food is one wrapped into many feelings. He was featured on the Rachael Ray Show alongside 10 other Oklahomans to highlight how residents lost a combined 1 million pounds as part of The Million Pound Challenge program. He lost over 120 pounds in nine months by changing his diet and exercising, but it was largely through fad diets. He ended up gaining 50 of those pounds back before meeting his second wife. “Yes I lost weight, but my head wasn’t any better,” he said. “It didn’t get better until I started eating real stuff. When you eat something out of your garden or something grown locally at a farmer’s market, it is going to taste differently. “The things you buy at the store are grown for mass production, and they’re grown to produce
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Seed to Spoon is one of the most popular gardening apps in the iTunes store. | Image Jacob Threadgill
faster than the plant is designed to grow in some cases. The first time I tasted spinach out of the garden, it had this almost rough texture and crispness to it. There are different varieties [of spinach] that have nutty or sweet tastes.”
The things you buy at the store are grown for mass production. Dale Spoonemore
Although Spoonemore has worked for software companies for more than a decade, he didn’t learn the full set of skills required to fully code his application until last summer, when co-workers encouraged him to pursue it himself. He obsessively watched coding training videos on Pluralsight.com to learn the basics and got the beta version of the application up and running by December 2017. Now, his wife and two of his children help update the app. “As a software developer, at a click of a button, you can be in front of the entire world,” he said. “All of us are working on the app together. It’s one of the most amazing moments of my life. I’m on the couch with my wife and two daughters creating software in Moore, Oklahoma.” Visit seedtospoon.net.
Seed to Spoon provides gardening tips, including planting dates in the United States based on the user’s location. | Image Jacob Threadgill
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