.. under "Uses", an entry for "Fruit Tree"? In the case of the Fig, that's the primary reason for growing it.

That's under "Fruit: Edible to mammals"

Okey doke, thanks!

Dave,

These requests mostly apply to vegetable crops or edible greens. Maybe they would fit into some custom architecture that only applied to crops.

In the Plant Database, could we have two more fields for "uses"?
- cover crop
- forage

And either add "and greens" to the name of the "vegetables" field, or add 1-2 more "Uses" fields for them?
- salad greens
- cooked greens

Can we have a field for "thin to distance", or "spacing"?
Or should we use "plant spread" for that? I realize that some use "row distances plus spacing within the row" while others use a single "distance". Maybe "thin to" is such a matter of opinion that it shouldn't be a "data" field at all.


I'm used to a format like that often seen on a vegetable seed packet:
- weeks before or after frost to sow outside
- weeks before or after frost to sow inside
- weeks before or after frost to transplant
- sowing depth,
- germn soil temp,
- days to emerge,
- thin to distance
- DTM

Is it a wacky idea for an entry in the Plant Database to have a small link to the relevant row in your sowing advice Web app?

I often wish I could add my Data and Comments at the same time I add a plant. Is that blocked so that the moderator can accept or reject the allegedly "new" plant before we do much typing?

In response to your last question, Rick, your guess is correct. Many new plant proposals are declined for a variety of reasons, and even the ones that are approved might need some immediate tweaking by a moderator to correct misspellings or obsolete species names, so it makes sense to wait until the plant actually has been added.

RickCorey said:In the Plant Database, could we have two more fields for "uses"?
- cover crop
- forage

And either add "and greens" to the name of the "vegetables" field, or add 1-2 more "Uses" fields for them?
- salad greens
- cooked greens

I have added all these under "Uses".

Can we have a field for "thin to distance", or "spacing"?

I'm willing to do it but we need more discussion on the right approach for that.

Is it a wacky idea for an entry in the Plant Database to have a small link to the relevant row in your sowing advice Web app?

I have plans to incorporate the calendar into the database more.

I often wish I could add my Data and Comments at the same time I add a plant. Is that blocked so that the moderator can accept or reject the allegedly "new" plant before we do much typing?

It's mostly a technical limitation. Zuzu is right about them going in together and it would be bad to decline all of it even if just the data would be declined.

Cool, all of the above sounds good to me.

Thanks for greens, salad greens, cover crop and forage crop!

I'll think about "thin to distance" and "spacing", but I don't have any good ideas.

Whatever way the field or fields were set up, soil fertility, warmth, sun angle and day length could probably change the "optimum" by a goodly amount. Some harvest small plants early, others want to take a few big really mature plants.

With leafy crops, it makes sense to leave the seedlings 3 times too dense, and only thin them as you harvest the first 2/3 or the crop as they start to shade each other.

How could this be compressed into something palatable? I don't know:

Rows 12-18" apart. Space 5-6" apart within the row.
SFG: 2-3 per square foot
Intensive Raised Beds: 6-8" apart
Broadcast: N seeds per square yard or per 100 sq ft
Wide Band: band is W inches wide and sow N seeds per linear foot.

Maybe what we already have is best (even though I don't have that stat for most crops):
"Plant Width" tells a gardener whether to start out with it "dense" or "thin", and then they learn from their first crop what would work better for them.

Johnny's and other farm-oriented seed vendors have tables of # of seeds per 100' of row, or pounds per 1,000 sq ft or per acre. On my scale, that doesn't help much.

I usually look for the "spacing within a row" and then use around 1/2 that separation in both directions. Then I expect to thin 1/2 or more of the seedlings before they touch, if I have good germination. I intercrop something else if I have poor germination.