Sad news: TinkersGardens' Daylily database will no longer be accessible

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Reposted from:

Posted: December 31 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged
Dear Friends,

After a great run of more than nine years,
TinkersGardens.com has reach an financial impasse
requiring some major changes in our business.

Having dedicated thousands of hours to making the Daylily
Database what it is today, we are not simply going to let
it fall by the wayside. We are however seeking
alternative hosting solutions since our current hosting
situation is costing us more money than we now take in
through ad revenue. If successful the Daylily Database
should be back up and running by the North American
spring bloom season.

The technology used in creating the database is an aging
mishmash of differing technologies, hence it may be
necessary to completely rewrite the front end using newer
techniques. That may take quite some time.

Again, we wish to thank so many of you for your patronage
and support over the years. Many of you have become good
friends. It is with truly sorrowing hearts that we pull
the plug on this project that sprang from a heart full of
passion for the flower we all so love.

On January 30, 2012 TinkersGardens will close its doors.
We wish all of you many blessings in this new year and in
the years to come. We hope that the services we have
provided over the years have had a positive and lasting
impact in your lives as gardeners and fellow tinkerers.

Humbly we remain truly yours,
Jason and Tinker
Founders TinkersGardens.com

Wow, I use their site a lot. I definitely will miss it. Hope they can eventually put it back online again.

We hope that this forum here at ATP will fill the gap for Tinkers users. Please feel free to write your friends there and invite them to come here.

Our database now has all the registration info on the plants, and the images we have in it is growing quickly!

I am stunned as use it all the time.

Is the database as complete as Tinkers? I had no idea.

I believe it might have more info, not sure. Been a while since I was at Tinkers,

We added lots of checkboxes and pull downs for more information than is typically in the AHS database. I don't think Tinkers had all our options. But, that depends on the members to add that addition info. For example, we have an area to add info on rust resistance, and fertility. Also te comments area.

We have many images, but would love to have more. You can earn acorns by adding images.

Here is the daylily portion, in alphabetical order...
http://garden.org/plants/brows...

Here you can put in the plant name, such as RUBY SPIDER and the database will find all cultivars with that name.
http://garden.org/plants/

Very sad news! Seems like I'm always checking Tinkers for pictures of daylilies I'm interested in. I sure hope everyone continues to post daylily pictures in our Plants Database here, and I really encourage our new members to post your daylily pictures in our database -- and you'll even get acorns! When I google a daylily now almost every time ATP is one of the selections, but more often than not there is no picture for that daylily yet. But hopefully that will change!

Say it ain't so! I love Tinkers ~Jan

Tinkers has a feature that as far as I am aware, no other site has. They list children of the cultivar. I always like to check that feature out to see what kind of babies the plant has produced and how many. For hybridizers that is an excellent feature. I hope ATP's can some day have this feature.

thats the part i like too. i am always looking up the babys.

our search feature here is still being developed. I think in the future putting in a parent would bring up the kids. But I don't think it does now.

That is the part I use the most too. I like to see what is fertile and what the offspring look like. It seems like some plants seem to really stamp themselves on the babies. Now it is even more important that we all add as much info to our database as possible. I am particularly interested in what is pod/pollen fertile.

Yes, as hemlady mentioned, the one thing Tinkers had in their database is that they list children of the cultivar. I have already spoken to Dave about this and it's something that he can eventually add too.
So please, everyone please invite anyone they know from Tinkers to help fill the daylily database over here. Remind them that ATP does NOT charge a fee to be a member and the forum format is easier to use.

Happy New Year, everyone! : )

The advanced search function at AHS (http://www.daylilydatabase.org...) also may be able to bring up children (and grandchildren) of the cultivar. Scroll down to the section called “Parentage” near the bottom of the form, type in the name of the cultivar (make sure that the ‘exact’ box is checked on the right hand side), and press the “Search” button beneath the form.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t have nearly as many pics as Tinkers’ database, but it also has other quirks. For example, if you type in Wild and Wonderful, even though the ‘exact’ box is checked, it also brings up the children of James Hall’s Buddy’s Wild and Wonderful. Less understandable is why Big Sur, for example, shows that it has 17 children/grandchildren in Tinkers’, but AHS’ advanced search function -“No results found.” So, be aware that there is a bug of some kind in the database, but perhaps it’s better than nothing in the interim.

All the best - Elizabete

One of the things I like best is having the parentage and using the photo's for my files. I have never used anyone's photo's except for my own viewing and to ID cultivars. Since I don't have many Pics. I am no help to myself or anyone else.

ATP has everything that is listed on AHS so the parentage is there. Dave has a search engine in place and over time, things that need updating and tweaking will continue to improve. He has the technology, we just need to let him know our wishes and needs to make this database rock!

I felt that Tinkers has a simple search engine for the cultivars. I would begin typing in "Crimson" and every flower with crimson at the beginning of their name would show up in a drop down box. Then as I continued typing "Pri..." (for Pirate) the drop down box would shrink. I really liked it for names I wasn't quite sure of the spelling of, or for ones I could remember the beginning, but not the last part of the name. It was just so simple & quick to use. ~Jan

I used Tinkers a lot also for the parentage as well as NHS.
Sorry to see it go, but looking in just one place like ATP will be even better.

I was a member of Tinkers for quite some time and also contributed a lot of pictures to the database along with many other people. It involved a lot of time adding those pictures so I am hoping that somehow they will find a way to keep the database in the future. I just don't have the time to start adding pictures to another database.

From the sounds of it, it's not just the database that will close down, it's the entire Tinkers site, forums and all.

daylilydreams, I do hope you reconsider and perhaps add a few at a time, maybe a winter project. Even if you post images here in a thread, perhaps a fun winter time parade of favorite shots or blooms, it's easy for anyone then to add them to the database directly from the thread by clicking the "[Propose image for the plant database]" located at the bottom of each image.

I am sorry to see that Tinkers is closing down. I really do hope it comes back up. I hate to see anyones hard work and dedication bite the dust. I never did use Tinkers much but every once in a while I did.