Ordering plants...

 Data Mangling to Estimate Timing

A fellow gardner, Taylor Brewer, posted that  he was creating a spreadsheet in the official facebook group Gardyner. Recently it became available through the user group Gardyn. In a quick trial, the crop table showed replant dates last month (December). However it was based on the assumption I had gardyn spots available for them (or some alternative for fertilizing). There was no error handling for plants that did not sprout or died early. Also I found it difficult to know where I was in a  large data set.

So I created more sheets in the spreadsheet I had started. I liked his idea of a key sheet for the information about the plants. (totally get it from coding/db, but am not a power spreadsheet user.) I created one table with a column for green/herb/fruit/flower. I linked in the mygarden.com/plants links. Some pages had an index to the left. The plant lists were not consistant. (Taylor used similar information on zendesk. Those links were as descriptive but less intuitive. Not sure what direction Gardyn is moving in. Clearly the thinning and lighting information was there. Again there were some inconsistancies in plant lists. I did not find a page for  Calirachoa - Is there confusion with Petunia?)

After that I created a log that referenced the key. I am sorry I did not do a better job of keeping dates. I have created a filter to show what cubes I have in stock, but not yet planted. I also created a filter aimed at replanting in the nursery. In time I should expand this to compare actual times with estimated ones. Reminded of IBM and grabbing as much data as possible - you never know how you might slice and dice. Getting customer data when you wanted to run a report was problematic. (I do not have an id separating two of the same plant planted on the same day.)

I tried to create a chart based on dates and offsets. The process seems painful. (Apple has a similar problem.) If I just go with number of days I can get it. I don't like the scale of 50. Heaven forbid I want to scale on 7 or 28. Finally just divided my numbers by seven. This allows me to get a succession plan similar to what Barthalamew has in Squarefoot Gardening. Unfortunately I have not figured out how to get out of  creating a table on the order of 70 plants types X 4 overlapping intsances.

What to order when

In December I chose to order plants that I did not have that I wanted. Clearly I went for cooking herbs: Italian parsley and chives, (Then I ended up planting chive seeds from my garden into the failed tatsoi cube).

For January I ordered based on trying to sprout a replacement for an estimated dieing plant. I skipped some of the lower producers. Unfortunately Red Sails was not available. Looking at the lettucy bits I have not tried ( flashy,  lollo rossa, romain). The fist was the fastest growing.