Two Database Features You May Not Know About

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Posted by @dave on
We have a powerful photo browsing tool that I want to make sure you know about, and we have a planting calendar tool that hooks into the database and makes planning your vegetable garden a breeze.

Over there on the left side of this page, in the blue navigation bar, you'll see a link for "Goodies." Click that, and you'll see a few tools and knickknacks that are useful and fun. One of them is the Garden Planting Calendar. The direct link to it is https://garden.org/apps/calend...

Go there, punch in your zipcode and you'll get everything you could want to know: your average frost dates, when to start seeds of the various veggies, when to transplant stuff out, and things like that. It works for most parts of the world, but areas that don't get much of a winter will find that it may miss the mark. I find myself referring to it numerous times per year to help remind me of when things should be started!

Another really neat goodie, that I especially love, is the "Plant Photos View." Click on that and it'll show you the photos posted today to the database, sorted by how many thumbs they've gotten! The real power of this tool, however, is in the various options you can change. At the top, you can sort by:

1) New. Items will be shown in the order they were posted. The newest images are at the top.

2) Popular. Items are shown in the order of thumbs received.

3) Buzzing. Items are shown in the order of replies received! This is how you can find ongoing discussion threads about photos in the database!

Now, as mentioned above, the default is "Popular Today" but you can also change the timeframe. Select "Last Month" and sort by Popular to see the most popular images from the past month. This is a great way to see the very best of the photos! Also, you can sort by buzzing to see all the discussions from the past month. If you're feeling particularly brave, limit it to Last Year and you'll see a LOT. So much fun!!

Best tool ever, right? Well, there's more!! You can use this exact tool inside a certain area of the database. To do that, go to the specific database in question. (Do that by going to the Plant Database front page, then over on the right click in the "Visit our custom databases" section.) Once you're on the front page of a custom database, for example The Daylilies Database then scroll all the way to the very bottom of the page and click on "Browse recent daylilies images." Now you're at the same tool again, but this time you're only seeing daylilies. Seriously now, isn't that the coolest thing ever?

 
Comments and Discussion
Thread Title Last Reply Replies
It is cool! by vic Feb 3, 2015 8:19 AM 8

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