What are My Frost Dates? instant search (BETA)

New this week is another (beta) search page for finding your frost dates:

What Are My Frost Dates?

The idea is that this will be a standalone tool (exactly the same as the new What’s My Zone search page) – it should work worldwide as it is based on everyone’s Folian Frost Date observations. For the same reason, it can be a little less accurate as we are dealing with real data so we need your help to make it as good as it can be:

Check that you currently have the most accurate Frost Dates listed in your Gardener configuration settings

To make sure at the start that we are using the most accurate data available, instead of using the search to check your Frost Dates, try and validate your dates with an outside source if you can. Frost dates can be quite difficult to find, so it would be great if anyone finds some good sources that they could list them in this thread for others to use.

I’ll start with a few that I have found in my travels around the net:

http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/ (US)

http://www.gardenaction.co.uk/main/weather.asp (US, UK and Australia)

"What's My USDA Zone?" Instant Search

Hi all – this week, we’ve also rolled out a new (beta) search page for finding your zone:

What’s My USDA Zone?

The idea is that this will be a standalone tool that anyone can use to check what zone they are in – it works worldwide as it is based on everyone’s Folian Zone observations. For the same reason, it can be a little less accurate as we are dealing with real data so we need your help to make it as good as it can be:

Check that you currently have the most accurate Zone listed in your Gardener profile, and each of your Gardens.

Make sure you are using the USDA Zone scale, not Sunset / Aussie etc. as different scales will effect the accuracy of the search.

To make the conversion easier, we have also developed a new Aussie to USDA Zone converter to easily check what your USDA zone is (if you don’t know your Aussie zone, check this site first).

Sunset to USDA is a bit trickier as Sunset is much more granular than USDA, so several Sunset Zones can be the same USDA Zone. We’re still working on a converter for this, but in the meantime you can find a basic converter here (if anyone can find any others, let us know!)

The wikipedia entry on Hardiness Zones is also a good reference point to use.

Why does Folia use the USDA Zone system?
We are using the USDA zone system as our standard reference point as it is the most widespread and recognizable climate zone system. We know it has a limited practical application in places where frost dates are rare or non existent, but the main benefit of the system is to group gardeners together that are in similar climatic conditions – so it’s a useful system for Folia to use (until a better system comes along!).

Anyway, let us know what you think about the new What’s my Zone? page !

New Garden Harvest Tally Reports

Quick note about a new feature for our lovely Supporters – from today, you’ll now see a “Harvest Tally” tab on your Garden profile pages.

This is a brand new page that summarises all of your harvest logs for every year of your garden. Instead of basing this on the traditional Jan – Dec calendar year, the year is based on whatever date you choose your gardening year to start at – you can configure this date over on your Account Configuration page.

The page is also nicely printable (only prints the tally, not the rest of the page), and also is exportable for import to your favourite spreadsheet program. You’ll find both of these options over on the right hand side of the page.

How far you can go back in your harvest history is also configurable – it’s based on your garden’s Established Year – to change, edit your garden and you’ll find a box to modify (under the Location details).

To see an example, check out my Rooftop Terrace Garden Harvest Tally from last year (I can already see that this year hasn’t been nearly as productive as last!), cristina’s Herb’s and vegetable garden or flowerweaver’s Vegetable garden (both have weights AND amounts recorded and are much more diligently entered than my own records!)

This feature is exclusively available to our Supporters. Supporters help us keep the site up-and-running and allow us to spend time working on funky new features like this one. Check out your Account Upgrade page for details on how you can become a Folia Supporter.

Let us know what you think! If you have any suggestions or issues with using this feature, please log it over in our new Support / Feedback area so we can track it through for you :)