Upcoming Grow Your Own Food Website - pls help us with a survey :-)

radooo

Hi GIY lovers!

I am writing on behalf of a web start up called My Happy Carrots. We are part of the Dublin Launch48 program for digital start ups. We are currently developing an urban and micro gardening website.

Our website is based around gardeners, creating profiles where they can keep grow logs and share their knowledge with other members of the community.

We would appreciate your participation in this study. The survey will take less than 5 minutes to complete. Thank you!

Here is the link:

*****

Sorry surveys are not allowed

Ever2010

Hi - I started your survey but really all of the things that are listed are already provided on the GIY website,which has a large online following as well as local groups for veggie growing and the garden.ie for those interested in gardening outside of just vegetables.

Is this a Dublin one only? Is yours a business rather than a not-for-profit? I'm just not so sure that there would be a market when GIY does this so well nationally...

radooo

Thank you very much for your feedback - I think our focus would be more on the niche of city dwellers (newbies) - Dublin and Cork primarily.

My Potatoes

I think there are enough GYO websites. I'm not sure if another one is required, even if it is a niche site for urban and micro gardens.

The best for advice is the RHS one:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/gardening/grow-your-own

There is interesting opinion and some advice on Irish Gardeners, and a forum:
http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/

I only use Garden.ie occasionally, though I do trust it.

Boards.ie Gardening is ok. I consider it more opinion than advice.

The GIY website seems like a good idea but it's coming a bit late to the party. Check out the forum, the most recent posts can be weeks old. 'Nuff said.

Unless you're going to do a website that has something genuinely new to offer, I can't see it taking off.

The whole GYO thing is not as big as it was a few years ago. It's fading off a bit. Many didn't realise the cost, in terms of time, effort and money.

The .com extension is not advisable either. Get .ie, it's more professional.

redser7

Are you hoping to make money from this? Did you start off with a desire to make money or are you gardeners first?
I agree with My Potatoes, there's no money to be made in the idea. The audience is too small.

rgiller

Quite negative responses to this idea so far - not sure why. If someone wants to try to make a living doing something he enjoys and believes in, surely it's worth a shot. I believe that the information available online could be more newbie-friendly, and a new resource to provide this could be successful. I'd certainly like to see more detailed information for people who have little to no experience of gardening and growing their own food (like me). Many sites and fora seem to take a certain amount of starting knowledge as read, which can make them a little inaccessable for beginners. If these guys can fill that gap online and maybe offer some hands-on classes (where they can sell their stuff), it could be very useful

radooo

Hi Guys, thanks for sharing your thoughts - greatly appreciated!

redser7

I don't mean to be negative just for the sake of it. I wish you the best of luck.
But if someone is looking for a resource then really they need go no further than the rhs site.
If it is a forum they want where they can ask questions and have discussion then the busiest forum is the one you want. I think this forum is the busiest in Ireland. But it doesn't stack up to something like growfruitandveg.co.uk. Over there the traffic is unreal and you can expect answers to anything from beginning to expert almost immediately. I think it's just a logistics problem you would be facing really.

My Potatoes

I agree with redser7.
Despite all the Irish gardening fora out there, boards is the busiest!

I think we're being pragmatic, rather than negative.

I like the name myhappycarrots, btw.

mraonghus

Hi,

I was working with Radooo on this and just wanted to respond to a few of the points raised.

In terms of the commercial side of the project, it became obvious that this would probably make most sense as a social (not-for-profit) enterprise. It would of course need revenue to support itself but any profits would be re-invested in the platform to make it better.

The main function of the idea is to take the guess work out of growing fruit and veg, particularly for novices, but I think also for more experienced growers. As a novice myself, I've found that the process tends to be quite experimental. And that's probably a lot of the fun of it! But it's quite hard to track these experiments.

So, in the first phase of the project, the application would function as a tool to log and analyze how you plant. Over time you could spot trends and adapt your approach. There's quite a lot of variables (soil type, sun light, humidity, nutrient levels, soil and air temperature, watering frequency and quantity etc). By tracking one or more of these you could start to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't.

It would be encouraged for people to allow these logs to be public so others could see what has worked for those in similar conditions (i.e. better to use hard data from somebody in your own climate rather than opinion from someone growing under radically different conditions).

Over time, if enough people were using the platform, specific instructions for people could be provided, that would be matched to their growing conditions.

Ultimately, it's the sort of thing that would complement rather than compete with existing work by GIY and people like that.

What do you guys think?

Gautama

Gardening is an art, not a science; treat it as such.

CorsendonkX

mraonghus wrote: »

Hi,

I was working with Radooo on this and just wanted to respond to a few of the points raised.

In terms of the commercial side of the project, it became obvious that this would probably make most sense as a social (not-for-profit) enterprise. It would of course need revenue to support itself but any profits would be re-invested in the platform to make it better.

The main function of the idea is to take the guess work out of growing fruit and veg, particularly for novices, but I think also for more experienced growers. As a novice myself, I've found that the process tends to be quite experimental. And that's probably a lot of the fun of it! But it's quite hard to track these experiments.

So, in the first phase of the project, the application would function as a tool to log and analyze how you plant. Over time you could spot trends and adapt your approach. There's quite a lot of variables (soil type, sun light, humidity, nutrient levels, soil and air temperature, watering frequency and quantity etc). By tracking one or more of these you could start to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't.

It would be encouraged for people to allow these logs to be public so others could see what has worked for those in similar conditions (i.e. better to use hard data from somebody in your own climate rather than opinion from someone growing under radically different conditions).

Over time, if enough people were using the platform, specific instructions for people could be provided, that would be matched to their growing conditions.

Ultimately, it's the sort of thing that would complement rather than compete with existing work by GIY and people like that.

What do you guys think?

Sounds great, scientific idiot proof gardening but it all depends on the quality of the data collected by your members. Take soil nutrition, will all your members be expected to get their soil tested by an accredited lab or buy one of those cheapo next to useless soil kits? You will need to standardise the methods of measuring the variables.

For your scientific "local knowledge" to really work for people willing to pay you need to have a large amount of data built up before launching otherwise it isn't really going to be worth signing up to the app. If you sign up and find that within a 20 mile "local" area the app has only 2 growers both of which have data less than a year and only covering a limited number of crops I can't see it taking off.

You could perhaps see if you can somehow collect some historical weather data from the various local weather stations around Ireland.