"La Puce" wrote in message
oups.com...

Rupert wrote:

That's not far off the mark at the moment. I ( and others) am involved
in
preparing a database of on line plant suppliers and their quality of
service
which means I have ended up with a plethora of plants all of which need
planting. I can't pronounce the names of half the stuff that is arriving
and have long forgotton what conditions they like.
A laptop and Google in the garden have been invaluable in the last few
weeks. (keyboards and compost not the best combination).

Poor chap. Do you mean to say you are kinda 'testing' the plants
yourself from ordering them to planting them and see how they perform
plus the 'customer care' you're getting from the suppliers ? This is
amazing.


It's not that amazing something similar but less exhaustive was done several
years ago by a now well known on line plant supplier .
How the plants perform does not come into it. It's implicit that the success
of the plant is down to the recipient (assuming the plant is in good
condition when it is received). As I told Sacha most of the stuff is binned
because there is no requirement to plant and there is a limit to what you
can do with dozens of plants all of the same variety

Packaging/cost ratios/delivery/health/root volume/billing procedure/pot
shape/dimensions/care instructions/complaint procedure ---it goes on and on
but you get the idea. The actual data required varies from plant to plant
and that is the most difficult bit to predefine.
The suppliers are not limited to the UK so there is some pretty weird stuff
coming in.
Anything dead or "iffy" goes to a company specialising in microbiology who
input into the database.
I have had a sneak preview of the data and there is nothing that surprises
me (yet) other than the complexity of the beast.
It's very early days as the project runs for a year and only started Nov
2005.