U of G environmental engineering students develop a solution to prevent over-watering house plants
After spending the spring season at home during quarantine, it was easy to notice that many people found themselves taking a shot at starting their own plant and vegetable gardens. Whether you’re an experienced gardener or someone with a brand-new green thumb, successfully keeping plants healthy can be a challenge and nearly all plant-parents have experienced over-watered plants.
Over-watering is considered one of the most common problems facing plants and a leading cause of early plant death. With this in mind, and after seeing a common theme emerging as their friends struggled to keep their plants alive and healthy, Cody Kupferschmidt and Jordan Stewart, two U of G environmental engineering graduates decided to create a solution: the Plant Snorkel.
Plant Snorkel manufactures and markets a product that can be inserted into plant containers to mitigate the effects of overwatering. The patent-pending design can be used in plant containers of many different shapes and sizes, including pots with no existing drainage. The goal is to make sure customers “never drown another plant.”
Going from design to prototype
The John F. Wood Centre for Business and Student Enterprise was an important step in their entrepreneurial journey. It took the entrepreneurs more than 50 design iterations to get land on their patent-pending design, created by the 3D printers at the Wood Centre’s MakerSpace. The funding they received through the Hub program helped them purchase their own 3D printer to continue their prototyping.
Cody and Jordan hope to continue to build their business and have plenty more sustainable-focused innovations that they hope to bring to market once their Plant Snorkel product has fully launched.
