Talk about growing your business and at such a young fruitful and tender age before blossoming into an adult! Enough with the word play over-kill! Meet this cool cucumber (I promise that’s the last!) – Claire Reid, an ex-St Teresas Mercy School student who invented Reel Gardening at the age of 16.
Bored one holiday and with her dad on her back saying “you can’t sit around all holiday, you have to come up with something to do” she decided to start her own veggie garden. Frustrated with some of the set up problems she encountered when establishing the garden, and after much trial and error (and a gold medal from Eskom at the Eskom Young Scientists Expo) Reel Gardening was born.
It’s a simple application that allows one to buy a row of seeds on a reel. Plant them in the soil and by following the directions one should have gorgeous greens sprouting in no time. The strips are color- coded for easy reference, organic and biodegradable. The whole process uses only a fraction of the water normally used in veggie gardens.
Claire shared her idea with Anglo American (she’s not shy) who approved a loan to get Reel Gardening off the ground (or into the ground in this case). “I was fortunate to obtain a research and development loan from Anglo Zimile”, she said. “This loan enabled me to start the process of getting Reel Gardening into a position where it could be a commercially viable product.”
Claire attributes her focus and passion to her parents who are very driven and who always encouraged her to think of creative ways of doing things. Giving up was never an option, she always had to find a way around the problem. She believes the two main issues that our country faces is a lack of food and proper housing. She is tackling both.
