growstuff | So, what do you want from this?

So, what do you want from this?

I see we now have > 20 people involved here on DW, and 14 members on the (currently broken, ugh, stupid buggy hosting site) mailing list, so welcome to everyone! We have an intro thread in progress if you'd like to stop by and introduce yourself.

I wanted to take a moment to ask everyone what you would want from a site like this? I mean, I have an idea what I want, but I'm pretty sure I'm not everyone, so I'd love to hear all your ideas for what the site could do/be.

So here are some leading questions which you can answer in comments, or just ramble in a general way if you prefer?

What do you most want to be able to do on a site like this?
What's missing from other sites that you've looked at?
What would make you keep coming back/staying involved, rather than drifting away?
If this site just did one thing really well, what do you wish it was?

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My answers:

1) What do you most want to be able to do on a site like this?

I want to keep a diary/log of my food gardening and related activities (eg. composting, food preservation) both for my own reference, and so I can share it with friends. I do this a bit on my blog of domesticity but not in an organised way. I'd also like to be able to connect with other gardeners who are into the things I'm into, and/or are in my local neighbourhood, to share information/ideas or, for the local ones, to share crops/seeds/etc.

2) What's missing from other sites?

A sense of "home". I haven't found a site yet that really feels right to me. The other thing is I really prefer websites/communities with an open development model and using open licenses for data and code.

3) What would make me stay?

Conversations, connections, and (to be pragmatic) well-judged email reminders and other communications along those lines. (Not spammy ones, but actually useful ones.)

4) If the site did one thing really well, what do you wish it was?

Making it easy for me to publish a record of my garden's growth and show it off to friends.

I hadn't actually thought about what I would want out of this. I just saw something about growing things and I like growing things, so I signed up. I thought perhaps I could help answer questions, since I have quite a bit of experience with gardens and farms. I do like your ideas of being able to publish info about my garden.

I have a gazillion community web sites, and if I were to add a gardening one to my list it'd probably be GardenTenders.com (because I'm already involved in sister-sites LumberJocks and HomeRefurbers).

So what I'm looking for is something where I can update my social media script to look for patterns like "(Planted|Harvested) (([[a-z]+)(\s+[a-z]+)*)" and pass that information, along with lat/lon, along to an aggregating site that can then give me growing times for my region.

Clearly that's too simplistic because I can stagger my planting, and the notions of "region" are going to be hard to suss out, but...

Now my partner, who does most of the gardening, would love a tool that lets her do layout and shows her shadow tracks for various different times of year (ie: with surrounding buildings, and with different height plants), along with some database that understands plant compatibility (where do you put the marigolds for bug suppression).

The first one seems like a fairly easy database, though I don't know how to fill the user base.

1. What do you most want to be able to do on a site like this?

To keep a gardening journal that I can easily share with friends. Right now, I have a written journal that I used to keep track of basic gardening milestones (sowing, germination, transplants) and I haphazardly share photos and harvests on DW and Tumblr but it's not very organized and all over the place? It'd be nice if I can put it all in one place. I'd also like to be able to share seeds.

2. What's missing from other sites that you've looked at?

Comfort? I don't know how to phrase this properly. I don't get a sense of belonging at other places. I have one main garden forum I hit up for tips and tricks because it does contain a LOT of info from extremely experienced gardeners over many, many years, but I don't really get a sense of community there.

3. What would make you keep coming back/staying involved, rather than drifting away?

A sense of community, I guess?

4. If this site just did one thing really well, what do you wish it was?

Being able to keep an online, flexible* gardening journal that I can share with people. (* flexible in the sense that I do some unorthodox things in terms of sowing seeds & I'd like to be able to note that so people won't be alarmed that I'm sowing seeds outdoors in the middle of January on the US East Coast.)

What do you most want to be able to do on a site like this?

Browse other people's information to get ideas and try to learn more about growing things. I'd particularly like to be able to see what people geographically near me are doing so I can get new ideas for things to plant that may do well where I am.

What's missing from other sites that you've looked at?

I haven't looked around much for one. I generally won't sign up for sites that ask a bunch of intrusive and required questions during sign-up, so I'm not online very many places. I'm also leery of places that are advertiser-focused and/or seem to be venture capital projects planning for a sale to a larger company rather than something the owners want to run long term.

What would make you keep coming back/staying involved, rather than drifting away?

For reading, if I found at least one user telling an interesting "story" so that I wanted to find out what was happening next in their garden, as long as the site made it easy to keep up with their updates and filter things in such a way that I can keep up with just the things I'm interested in. For my own use, if I could customize things enough that whatever I didn't like about the default set-up didn't drive me away. (I know that's really vague - I'm not sure how to make it more specific without just going on a rant about what I think is wrong with various websites.)

If this site just did one thing really well, what do you wish it was?

Flexible privacy controls. I may want some information, particularly information that makes it easy to figure out where I live, to be less public than other information, so I'd want some kind of post-by-post or thing-by-thing privacy options as well as a blanket setting. I might, for example, only let certain users see pictures of my hypothetical front yard with its equally hypothetical distinctive yard art whereas everyone can see pictures of the hypothetical raised beds I'm using to grow spinach out back.

Garden journal (planting/harvesting, observations of sun, shade, wind patterns, etc, other misc notes), seed swaps, ability to connect with other local people possibly?

I'd love a tool that helps with permaculture design considerations, but I have no idea right now what that might look like! (inputs/outputs type thing? something that just prompts you along certain lines?)

Possibly the thing that I would love the most right now is a decent smartphone app to make it easy to add harvest/plant/etc notes to the garden journal part (because right now I am doing garden stuff in 10 min lumps & I've always found it really difficult to remember to update a journal).

I haven't even looked at other sites, but well-judged reminders are key, and friends who also use it.

What do you most want to be able to do on a site like this?

Compare notes with other people, read up on growing experiences,

What's missing from other sites that you've looked at?

Locally geographic information. I said in my intro post, but the majority of sites I've found which are useful are also (lower 48 states) US based.

What would make you keep coming back/staying involved, rather than drifting away?

Community. I don't want this to be a place where people just pick up information from a database; I want to be able to talk to people (whether those who helped pull together the data or are simply using the data to help their garden) and share experiences/advice.

If this site just did one thing really well, what do you wish it was?

Some kind of database/diary noting down weather patterns, planting date, whether it was inside or outside sowing (and if inside, date of transplant), crop type and variety, notes on growth, expected harvest time, and actual harvest time. Shareable/exportable would be great, and collating information with people locally to see what their experiences were with the same crops -- e.g. their tomatoes grew really well, mine didn't, we planted around the same time, but they planted a different variety (which might be better suited for the local micro-climate) would be awesome.

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