Heck I was just going to use Excel....

K


"Diana Kulaga" wrote in message
...
So, what does everyone use for this purpose? I had an Excel spreadsheet.
With it, I could add hyperlinks, sort, etc. But I'm hearing you guys talk
about data bases.

Which do you use?

Diana

"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..
I wound up re-entering a lot of names just so I could search the database
easier. For example plants were listed as Blc, brassolaeliocattleya and
every spelling in between. A computer genius I'm not but I learned
consistency isn't a hobgoblin of small minds where databases are
concerned, *G*. I wish she had recorded when each plant exited out of the
collection. What initially looked like over 1000 plants on paper wound up
being about 300 or so in real life. So far. We still have the outdoor
plants to do. But again, it should be easy to mark who's present and
accounted for..

K Barrett

"Dave Gillingham" wrote in message
...
Kathy, there's another use as well as the unpleasant long term
consideration. It
helps no end in tracking repotting & other treatment needs. I also try
to
record *where* each plant is in my collection now. That's after
searching &
swearing, trying to find a particular plant (or many) that my database
says
should be repotted.

And, while I don't keep it all as up to date as I should, I do ensure
that each
purchase, loss, repot, and position on shelf is recorded.

For repotting, I find it far easier to sort the database by repot date
than to
work my way through the entire collection looking for the date of last
repot on
each tag.


On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:50:55 -0700, "K Barrett"
wrote:

Marilyn Light (North American chair of the Orchid Specialist Group) used
to
give OrchidSafari chats on the idea of orchid conservation vis a vis
hobbyist's orchid collections. Or to put it another way, since habitat
is
being lost our collections just may wind up housing important plants,
maybe
even one's no longer found in the wild. You may or may not agree with
that
idea but one of the things Marilyn used to stress was to keep and
maintain a
list of all your orchids, hybrids included, because some just might
become
important.

Lo and behold, my mentor did keep a list of her orchids. More
importantly
she *maintained* the list! Dang, she even input purchases made just a
few
days before she died. (The woman was compulsive, *G*.) I can't tell
you
how easy it has been for her family to figure out what's in the GH. It
only
took a day to figure out what's still extant in her collection. Way
more
easy than the daunting task of cataloging what's in her library and
potting
shed.

So, while Marilyn Light might have had some lofty goal, thinking that a
list
of what's in the GH could conserve orchids in the wild, in reality its
made
one facet of my mentor's heir's lives real easy. People here have
mentioned
their orchid databases, some that even include flowering records.
*Kudos to
you all!* I never really was 'together' enough to make a list of my
orchids, much less keep it current but now I'm considering it and
including
my library's books, too. I figure my heirs deserve a clue as to what's
worthwhile in all the crap they may want to dump or sell on eBay.

K Barrett

Dave Gillingham
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