@Dave,
I've been tracking the times my plants bloom for a while but never did develop a good flexible system of doing so. Someone posted a link here to a Missouri Botanical Garden chart which looked very workable, if limited (see below). Since I'm trying to get all my plants inventoried in my Plant List, it would be easiest to do both things here at ATP.
Ideally it would allow a member to track their bloom times in their garden on a weekly basis. Many plants have a bloom period of only a week or two. If I could view another members bloom time chart, that could give me clues to selecting companion bloomers.
While this chart of the
Missouri Botanical Garden’s tracks blooming by week, a significant limitation is that plants are listed by genus or at best by species. I track by species and cultivar. The same as my Plant List.
A base calendar layout similar to the Mobot Chart, where I can have any (all) plants in my list, would do most of what I want.
A little more complexity. Bloom weeks vary from year to year. This year for instance, many of my spring flowering bulbs were 1-2 weeks later than normal. I'm assuming many other bloom times will be delayed as well. Plants which bloom for the first time this year need to be compared to other plants blooming this year, not last. I have bloom time charts for each year starting from 2009. A way to save (or download) bloom time charts from previous years is important.
Summary:
-A chart with similar layout/information to: Missouri Botanical Garden’s.
-Provide the ability to include any plant on my Plant List.
(it would be nice to be able to also include NoID plants for which I don’t have a positive ID beyond genus, species or classification. Not critical though).
-Track plant bloom times by week
(The ability to track peak vs. non-peak bloom would be nice. MoBOT uses red and yellow respectively)
-The ability to save and/or download old charts.
(ex. My 2014 chart can be saved. I can then start a new 2015 chart using the one from 2014 as a template.)
What other capabilities do we think a Goody like this should have?
