August 17, 2005

Making It In Maine

To hod and to hold

Pike Bartlett, founder and proprietor of Friendship Trap Co., used to irritate his wife, Elizabeth-Anne, when he'd harvest vegetables, along with mud and bugs, too, from their garden.  "I'd come in and dump them in the kitchen sink and my wife would getupset that I didn't wash them before,"  recalls Bartlett, whose spouse challenged him to solve the problem.  "She finally put her foot down and said, 'No more dirty vegetables in the sink.'"

Bartlett, whose company invented a plastic a plastic escape vent for lobster traps and an aluminum chip for lobster trap assembly, did just that.  The clam hod, a slatted wooden basket used for harvesting and rinsing clams, seemed the logical model.  He used material at hand -- pine and small-mesh wire -- to fashion a gardening basket for gathering and washing produce.

Frank Simon, a friend of Bartlett's and co-founder of Great Eastern Mussel Farmers in Tenants Harbor, saw marketing potential in the homespun creation.  He and the trap builder refined the Maine Garden Hod and the production process before patenting the product now available at garden centers, hardware stores and other outlets in Maine and beyond.  The Maine Garden Hod, which is made with Aquamesh trap wire and features a steam-bent oak handle, comes in 1/4-bushel and 1/2-bushel sizes.  The hod is being used for diverse purposes from cleaning rutabagas to cradling rolled towels at spas.  It sells for $31.95-$34.95 and can be purchased directly through Maine Garden Products Inc. at (877) 764-9365 and www.mainegarden.com.

Written by Letitia Bladwin

August 2005

Products of the Month

flower tote, $25

PROBLEM:  By the time you get them inside and into a vase, the posies you picked from your flower beds are a little less fresh -- and a little more bent and broken.

SOLUTION:  Take the lightweight Maine Garden Flasket out with you.  The stems you cut get the support they need, and the water in the base keeps the blooms from wilting.

TO BUY:  www.mainegarden.com

Written by Melinda Page and Elizabeth Wells

Photographs by Antonis Achilleos

Early Summer 2005

Sitting Pretty - Flasket holds its own when the going gets rough

A flisket, a flasket, a wood and plastic basket.  Or a vase.  Or a florist bucket.

The flasket is the latest from the good folks at Maine Garden Products in Camden, the same people who brought classy "garden hods" and the innovative "Able Table" to the market.

When Geoff Scott and the gang heard that gardeners were using hods -- wooden baskets with wire mesh bottoms -- for flower collecting as well as vegetable gardening, it didn't seem quite right.  It meant that collectors would have to walk around the garden with their freshly cut flowers out of water.

So, Scott, Frank Simon and Pike Bartlett, the principals of the company, put their heads together and came up with the flasket.  The design allows it to be set on uneven ground, and it easily holds water.

"It's kind of an intriguing idea," said Renee Beaulieu, horticulturist and Internet creative director at White Flower Farm in Connecticut, which is carrying the flasket.  "It's pretty well-thought-out.  A florist bucket looks wonderful but has a narrow base, and if your're on uneven ground and try to stand it up, when you turn around it may or may not be standing."

The flasket, like the hod, has multiple uses.  (The hod, we can attest, makes a nice magazine holder).  The flasket doubles as a vase.

And the name?  Simon and Scott and Co. thought they had concocted a clever one.  The Scott searched the Internet and found this entry from a Webster's 1913 dictionary:  "A long, shallow basket with two handles."

"In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket." -- Edmund Spenser, 1552-1599.

Perfect.

Flaskets fo for $24.95.  Look for them at your local garden center or go online and visit www.mainegarden.com.

Written by Allen Lessels