Maude's Market
In 2012, Electric Fertilizer ran its first "hosted" experiment with an outside collaborator: a raised bed of onions and potatoes at Maude's Market, a community garden in St. Louis, run with garden owner Maude. Roughly ten feet of the raised bed was electrified with a solar-powered 3V DC supply and buried electrodes, compared against an adjacent, larger non-electrified plot in the same garden.
At a 23-day check-in, both Maude and Electric Fertilizer reported the electrified side looked "fuller," with more shoots and larger leaves on the potatoes. No harvest weight or yield data was ever published, and no follow-up report after that point was found.
Why this is archived
This is a real, uncontrolled field observation, not a rigorous trial — there's no yield data and no statistical comparison, just a photographic, visual impression at one point in time. It's historically significant as Electric Fertilizer's first documented collaboration with an outside grower and its first hosted (not just personal) experiment, which is why we've kept it rather than deleting it. Treat it as a grower report, not as evidence.