pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Hi all,

I'm in the throes of moving, but will comment briefly as I am still interested
in the project.

Guilds are one of many important concepts in permaculture design.  However,
actual guild design has to be based on localized observation and expertise. I
agree with Chad that guild design as a primary objective at such an early
stage of this project is not appropriate.

I don't support offering oversimplified and/or "pre-packaged" guilds, which
IMO is a PC type one error in terms of both education and implementation.

There is enough written about guilds for people to start with in designing
their own locally appropriate guilds, if they have sufficient plant knowledge.
 I support linking or including this info in the DB somehow, as articles or
references.  Even Toby makes it quite clear (to me anyhow) that guild design
is localized, somewhat mysterious, and a very young "field of activity" and
that his examples are just that - examples of patterns to look for and work
with locally, not recipies.

AND - if we indclude in the DB information on guild-relevant traits,
characteristics, behaviors etc. of plants, that will be useful for design of
guilds based on local observation and expertise and substitution of locally
appropriate species.

This will include info we'd probably have anyway - plant size, shape,
maturity/growth rate, shading, soil type, moisture preferences, companions and
non-companions, inputs, outputs, similar/related species, and so on and on. 
All this info supports choosing plants for locally appropriate guild
experiments.

In other words, I think a good PC-centric DB will offer plenty of info to
assist guild design without having to be a "guild DB."

> Perhaps we can decide on some initial user-script/interface,

We need a back-end implemented first, or at the very least in conjunction
with.    Othewise any UI is just a mock-up or demo with a few bits of canned
data.

Given all the various plant DBs already in existence, and from Chad's comments
about merging data, perhaps a useful approach is to make this a project to
integrate as much as possible from existing DBs in ways that make it more
accessible and/or useful and/or relevant to permaculture design - and add more
as well.  Seems more PC to me - leveraging and integrating existing systems
for maximum benefit, rather than starting from scratch.

cheers,
John S.




John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Design & Technology Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net