...with our photos/discussion/etc. So you'll get our 2015 stuff in 2016, I guess.

(e.g. irises don't bloom until Memorial Day around here)

I'm curious what you mean by 'a year behind.'

Zencat said:I'm curious what you mean by 'a year behind.'

If you ask me for an Iris picture on the 15th of May, you'll get leaves and maybe buds dated May 15, 2015 or blooms dated June 1, 2014. Hence, we'll be a year behind if we want to participate. That's true of 1/4 or maybe even 1/3 of the categories. Our stuff fires much later than stuff in Texas/California/Florida as a rule.

Ahhhhh...

I am in Florida and my Amaryllis don't even produce buds until Spring. So I will be a year behind, too, if I want to participate.

This is the one weakness with having a site that serves the whole world - we can't really get everyone doing the same thing in their gardens at the same time.

When we're talking about daylilies in July the people in the southern hemisphere are hunkered down under a layer of snow.

What I did was tried to find the average and go from there. I looked at the tens of thousands of photos in the database and looked at when the photos were taken. Using that information I was able to make a report of the average time of people taking photos of each kind of plant, and we went from there.

Asa, photo's of leaves and buds are just as welcome as blooms

Plus, you can still celebrate what your plant looks like at that particular time. Sure it may not be in its full glory. But that doesn't make any other stage of development any less important.

Me, too.

Each successive year I'm just as excited to see how well my perennials have increased and how healthy they are, as I am about their blooms. If the first two are good, the blooms should surely follow.

Are we allowed to post year old photos or do they have to be current photos?

dave said:
What I did was tried to find the average and go from there. I looked at the tens of thousands of photos in the database and looked at when the photos were taken. Using that information I was able to make a report of the average time of people taking photos of each kind of plant, and we went from there.

I understand about the Southern Hemisphere - and the notion that a worldwide audience is tough to cater to. But it would seem to me that the overarching value here (when selecting dates) would be to parse the data and make decisions with an eye to being inclusive rather than exclusive. Tho I suspect (and hope) that your methodology ("go from there") is a little more robust than how it reads in your reply.

But forgive me for saying so, but I don't understand the math of taking an average in this case (and using the average as the time). Assuming that "go from there" means using the average bloom time for the week of the discussion, that effectively (and necessarily) leaves out half of the available pool. That's the nature of average. Half of the datapoints are excluded when you draw that line.

Further, say that you have a sample size of X individual entries in a dataset...contributed by a variety of people. If each photo counts as a datapoint toward that average, and if a single individual contributed even one more photo than his/her cohorts, the average bloom time would necessarily be skewed. Which is fine if you're catering to a single individual who enjoys posting pictures, but makes no sense if you're thinking about it on a per-garden basis (i.e. reaching all those who participated in some way).

Your site and you'll do what you do. But that explanation of the math used to support the dates is arguably more exclusive than inclusive.

If this explanation doesn't make sense, I can create a few graphs with sample datasets in support. But if you think of your dataset as a smoothish bell curve of some sort (and if it's not smoothish, the problem that I raised in my 2nd point is in play), each additional day on the x-axis equals more inclusiveness. So the first question for me would be, "what percentage of the contributors do I want to include in the discussion" rather than even think about the average. That number isn't relevant, in my opinion, in decision support here if the goal (which I'm admittedly mapping on to you) is to get as many people as reasonably possible contributing to the discussion.

YMMV, of course.

For those of us in zones 3 and 4, we will be behind also--but if you make this work for us, other areas will be off. So I understand how difficult this is. I still think it's a good idea and look forward to participating. If need be, I will use last season photos or take pictures of earlier stage growth. Whatever works...and I will have a ton of fun with it! Thanks Dave!

I just ran some numbers on the from the photo contest on the Irises.

Of the 112 photos that received votes, 87 had metadata that included the creation date. Admitedly a small sample size, but I don't have access to all of the data that Dave does.

If the cutoff is May 15, that leaves 53pct of the photos in my sample out of the mix for iris week. That is to say that only 47pct of the (available) suite of Iris photos (and subsequent discussion) are in play with the 15 May date (which truly does turn out to be the "average").

Whereas, if the cutoff date were the 10th of June, you'd include 86pct of the submitted photos, which seems a whole lot more inclusive and productive to me, at least.

Let us just go with the flow on this.
Mine will be later because I am zone 3, but I can still have fun watching what others are showing and growing. And some of us will show our plants later on the regular forums.
Let's just make it fun for everybody. The weather will play a large part everywhere anyway!

I just looked at the schedule of weeks----
some of those topics are very general and NOT related to zones at all.

I know that I won't have pictures of Rhododendrons in flower that week,
but I might share pictures of Rhododendron seedlings.

On the other end , because we are a short season area--
our fall vegetable harvests will be ahead of southerners!

evermorelawnless said:Of the 112 photos that received votes, 87 had metadata that included the creation date. Admitedly a small sample size, but I don't have access to all of the data that Dave does.

My sample size included the entire database. I got a pretty rough range of dates, something like the bell curve you were describing, but that wasn't my only criteria. We also had to make room for them all, and shuffle all the weeks around as best as we could. We definitely wanted Lilies and Daylilies to be in July, for example, which meant that Hostas and Clematis must come before that. Well, that's June. So June is taken at this point. But if we want Irises to be in June then we need to find a different place for hostas or clematis but June really was the solid winner for both of those. So irises remain in May. Late May? Well, Peonies need to be as late as possible in order to include as many as we can. So late May has to be for peonies. So that means that early May becomes the latest possible date for irises.

I know that makes some of the more northern gardeners left out and I definitely don't like that, but what can be done?

I'm happy to change things up and am not even opposed to running some celebration weeks back to back without a break between them (but I don't want to do too many like that because I think we need breaks in there as much as possible.)

Asa (and anyone else interested), we have a little time here in the next week or two to adjust these dates. If you want to propose a reshuffling, I will enthusiastically embrace the idea and will be glad to consider all date changes.

I have no problem posting pics from prior years. It by no means lessens their value.

Yeah, I think that this is worth revisiting.

In looking at the roses in the photo contest, we get 15pct of the entries taken by May 1. So...assuming that the photo-contest-ers are going to want to participate again, 2015 will be pretty light and 2016 will include 2015's photos instead.

I do get your point about multiple criteria, though, Dave. Gonna think on it and mess with some more numbers. But pushing 85pct of the roses into next year...well...

This is a good example of the way in which data can be skewed by the use of certain criteria. I posted dozens and dozens of rose photos in March 2014 and dozens more in April. I didn't enter the photo contest, however, so the use of that criterion could suggest that I have no roses blooming before May (or at any other time, for that matter). Data can also be skewed by the method used in submitting photos to the database. Mine usually are imported from the forums, so there's no date showing on the images.

I think @Calif_Sue and I have contributed the majority of rose photos, and by May our once-bloomers are almost finished for the year and our rebloomers can be entering their second flush. The timing of rose week therefore seems fine to me. In the past, rose week was always in February and even then we had no problems filling the week with photos and information.

Is the main concern for the photo contest for each week?