My Great Idea

Justin says...
That sounds like a great idea, Kath. It would be great if we could also run some ad hoc reports off the data, to answer such questions as "What percentage of X plant of Y variety survived after Z years within 100 km of my location". Or "How long does it take on average for X plant of Y variety to fruit in my city". That way we could potentially draw some conclusions around the best plants and varieties for our location, or the best feeding regimes, fruit yields etc. Or if that's not possible, a set of most commonly requested statistics, such as survivability rates of all stocked plants in each major city/region.

Ray Burton says...
Hi Kath, I have purchased many dwarf fruit tree varieties from Daley's over the years and they are all doing very well. In a more transient society such as we have in 2008 I think this is a great way to go for the home gardener. I live on 3 acres but I still prefer dwarf varieties in large pots similar to what you see in Europe. Why? because fruit picking is easier, they are easier to fertilize, check and remedy for pests, plus you can take them with you when you sell your property and move on. Also, city and suburban dwellers can grow these fruit trees on their patio's and balcony's. This would give Daley's a much larger client base and enable gardeners to grow their own "organic" fruits. What I am saying here is to keep your dwarf fruit tree research going because you excel in this area and maintain your focus on these dwarf varieties because I believe it is a key to Daley's future expansion in sales. I have included a photograph of one of my Brazil Cherries in a 100L pot. Keep up the great work!

Ray Burton {Tallebudgera Qld.}

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Correy (Daleys Website Guy) says...
Justin: Re: Plants surviving within 100km.

I am working on a mapping program right now which could possibly do what you say. It is not ready yet and has bugs but you are more then welcome to try it out and give me Some feedback... Here it is:

My Edible Fruits

I am hoping to launch it with our next newsletter in January. The hard part is making it good enough so that everyone with edibles will give us accurate address details so that I can get relative distances calculated from longtitude and latitude.

Jantina says...
Correy and Kath, great work! only now I will spend even more time on the net figuring out more fruits that might succeed in Mt. Gambier.

Correy (Daleys Website Guy) says...
Frank Re: Expert Advice

Have you created a forum with the advice you seek?

Here are some of the things we are doing with the website to try and build up the question and answer.

Tips:
Underneath each variety there is the option for people to give tips on how to best grow that variety.
Example: Dragon Fruit

This Fruit Tree Forum

Our Fruit Tree Blog

For Quick answers to basic questions eg Will it grow in pots, does it need a propogation source. What months does it fruit. Our Choosing Fruit Trees selector

And what I believe will be the best tool which will be released next month (fingers crossed) a space where people can share their orchard, ask questions and have them answered about each of their own edible fruits:
http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/my/

Nick says...
Corey - I tried the fruit tree selector but it seems that a lot of fruit trees are 'missing' from the selector (e.g. citrus). Is this something that is being addressed? - the tool is a great idea, but not much use without the full underlying database available.

Cheers
Nick

Correy (Daleys Website Guy) says...
Nick ( Choosing Fruit Trees Not showing many results )

The reason was because I had it set to only display what we have in stock.

I have changed it to include even plants not in stock now.

Thanks for the tip.

Nick says...
Correy - thanks for the update. Perhaps you could let the user filter the list so that he/she could see all plants or just thos in stock. I can see merit in both forms of the list.

BTW - I must say I'm very impressed witht the overall great attitude/passion that Daley's & yourself obbviously have for what you're doing. Imagine if everything in life was like this!

Con Tassi says...
Hi,
This may not be a new idea but just in case here it is. My school like many other schools across the country have erected horticulture enclosures in an effort to introduce to our techno-computer-crazy students that there are other things in life that are more important and perhaps more rewarding ....like growing and looking after plants, harvesting and selling the produce grown (entrepreneurial skills) etc. Trees of many varieties and their care are also favoured in order to add interest to the course. Perhaps a mail-out exposure of your varieties may be a good way of promoting Daleys Trees. The best part of all is that it is a Government instrumentality you are dealing with. School are always working with mail orders. No money lost. The more trees you distribute the better our world would be.
Regards
Con

Anonymous says...
i like kaths idea about my daleys nursery! it would help me a lot knowing about how to care for your plants. you all do a good job anyway. i look forward to adding to my edible garden in the future

Correy (Daleys Website Guy) says...
Firefly (Re: Accuracy listing plants other then daleys)

Yes you can do this. If you search for something not there it will then give you the option to add your own variety which will then infuse its way into the search results.

I think I should change this option to be shown all the time rather then only after you search and don't get any results

Here is the page Firefly was talking about:
http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/my/
(Only 20% complete so I appreciate your feedback)

Correy (Daleys Website Guy) says...
Hi Heather.

Can you do what you want with this tool?

Choosing Fruit Trees

Kath says...
Correy I've just had another idea, what if we could put all the public fruit trees on the map too. We could put these in a different colour and if anyone knows of an urban apple that we are welcome to help ourselves to they can add it to the map. The public persimmon, or peach in the park. The edible urban jungle.
Correy, you amaze me the way that you can make these ideas possible. Thank you.

Jantina says...
Correy, what about some sort of folder where we can list unusual or hard to get seed we have to share or want to swap? I have just swapped some seed with another forum poster (no money involved) and seeing Peters post about unusual passionfruit he has grown from seed made me think. The vast majority of seed would be legal to send within Oz and I am sure that Aqis or state authorities would be happy to give us a list of what we could not send where. What do you and other posters think of this?

RolFlor a says...
PICTURES : When an author starts a new forum topic and types in the name of a fruit, which is in the daleysfruit fruit index,can a daleysfruit label image automatically be offered to the author,for adding to the new topic?

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Jantina says...
Just in case there was any misunderstanding I was not inferring in any way that Peter had not done the right thing with passionfruit seed.I didn't word my post very well.

Kath says...
A few photo competitions with say a voucher as a prize-maybe have a competition section-biggest fruit/weirdest etc or even just a section people could share photos of their fruit trees.

Leah says...
as a newcomer to fruit tree growing i would like to be able to see in the listings the size the tree will grow to and what season/months it will fruit in. i think this would help to plan a fruit orchard that fruits all year round. also the climates (warm or cool) needed for successful fruiting.

amanda says...
There is so much wonderful advice and ideas contained in this forum that Daleys could probably out-rank Glowinski for the ultimate fruit tree growing bible!
I do feel, however, that we are a little bit neglected over here in the west with growing conditions.
I am also a member of the Diggers club and order 'odd' fruit trees regularly - the plants may be small but they are very reasonable (price) to send and all get here fine despite the delays - I only wish they had your amazing range.

I think most people here are aware enough to get rid of invaders when they see them (eg: after just one californian poppy season I decided that the last-resort-glyphosate had to be used on our rural block - they were just too good at surviving and seeding in a drought)

I would love to see a taste-test ranking like at Diggers. I don't want to wait years only to find out that something is 'bland'. This applies mainly to the exotic fruit trees really. Selection is very important - not only for growing conditions but taste - a lot of time, energy and water go into getting these guys up n running so they need to be worth it really.

Julie says...
I agree with Tiggerbow re recent posts - a small point, but slightly annoying!

Another small point: there are two Julies and two people called anonymous on here. It's a bit confusing! Other forums make you choose another name if one is already taken.

And an edit button wouild be nice. I often remember something else after I have submitted.

Julie says...
Oh no, another Julie!

Kath says...
Is there any way when someone posts a 'new' topic that is actually already on the forum you could join it up with the old one? eg someone has started a 'banana' question while there is already lots of info under another 'banana' heading. That would keep all the info about a particular topic together.Otherwise we end up with two,three or even more of the same heading & info harder to find.

Jimmy says...
Could you make it clear that this is not a way to contact Daleys themselves. A suprising amount of people ask questions thinking they are talking direct to Daleys.

Correy says...
Ok From the main forum page when you enter the subject I display similar matches to this topic so that people can see if it already exists.

Correy says...
Under About the Author I am including #UserID.

So if there are 2 Correys from Woolloongabba one will have a user id of #3 and another #2123 for example.

Also hopefully you guys have noticed the new " My Edibles" which links up to this forum.

Still a few bugs but once improved it should be able to help get up and running a lot of the wishes from this forum thread.

amanda says...
Hi Correy, I don't know much about how forums work and even tho' we have a unique user ID - is it possible for people to have "multiple personalities" under the one e-mail address?
Is this normal for all forums?