Posted by Doveoscar in Growstuff Feedback & Support on 2020-04-17 12:27:19 UTC and edited at 2020-06-08 15:50:29 UTC
PermalinkHave been looking for a decent "vegetable garden diary" for a while and have recently discovered this site, Am using it in parallel with another whilst I decide whether either is usable or whether the only alternative is to spend time building my own. Critical issues for me which may lead me away from here:
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The plant list is restricted, adding plants is available but there's no feedback at all as to whether an addition is accepted, rejected or why. I'd like the ability to add any plant I liked, happy for it to be restricted to my account.
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The plant list is quite arbitrary regarding groupings eg there are capsicums and peppers and bell peppers. I don't mind so long as searching is easy (which it is) and adding is easy too.
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Adding plants takes too long. I want to add it when I plant it.
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Once something's been planted I would like to be able to add dated notes possibly attached to pictures of that crop eg potted on, transplanted etc., rather than edit the note field of the original planting which seems to me the only way I can record progress.
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The transplant note referred to above should allow for relocation from one garden to another, but keeping a record of previous gardens. In the UK, a lot of plants start in a propagator under glass, then move to another greenhouse, then maybe outdoors.
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When planting, the options "under glass" and "heated" as well as sunny etc are needed.
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There should explicit options to record "begin harvest" and "end harvest" especially useful for continuously harvested crops eg radish, lettuce.
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Connection to Flickr seems to be how we're expected to upload photos. We should be able to upload pictures direct.
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There seem to be a harvest date discrepancy too. The dates look reasonably good predictions, but I have crops predicted to be ready in November and August which are shown with blue "harvesting now" and "3 weeks until harvest) boxes.
Apologies for the length of this, but I think the site is a great concept but it is only half-formed if it's to be a really useful tool.
3 comments
for added crops, you should have got an email when i approved and/or rejected each of those you added recently. Did you?
the capsicums and bell peppers etc vary from culture to culture. They're definite distinct plants when i buy them at the supermarket here with New Zealand English.
Direct upload of photos will need the storage bill to be funded by someone/something.
@shiny I was just adding my plantings, and it occurred to me that a bulk-add page for plantings would be nice. I just added a bunch of plantings from seed. They're all in the same garden, all on the same date, so a lot of it is repetitious. Something like
[ add another ]
And yeah, I know, I've been missing as far as development work goes for a couple years…
OK I think unless somebody gives me a very good reason it's bye bye to growstuff.org
The real killer for me is to find that I settle down after a day's gardening with a dozen or so plantings to record, and I can't do them all because the plants don't exist. So either I use a wrong name and make a mental note to change it when the plant is approved, or I make a note and come back some time later when the plant is approved.
Neither works for me I'm afraid. I need to be able to record what I've done as soon as I've done it.
Sorry this concept seems to have real promise, and I'd like to press on giving constructive feedback and hoping it will evolve, but not being able to record a planting when I do it is the real killer for me.