Suggestions for DaveWilson.com

[Dave Wilson Nursery]

People tell us that DaveWilson.com has a great quantity of helpful information, videos and resources (have you looked at our links pages? our site map?), and we would like to expand it, improve it. What should our priorities be? More videos? More pictures of backyard orchard culture? A list of the dozen or so best articles on the web for beginning home fruit growers? More advanced material? More regional information? What information about home fruit growing do you look for and not find?

[trungson]

Indeed it's a very informational site. Two improvements I would suggest:

1) More photos of the variety (add a photo for those varieties that do not have any associated photo, add more photos, or allow people to submit their own photos, even comments for the variety, with approval from DWN). For beginner like myself, I found those very important in selecting a suitable variety. The social aspect of the site would greatly increases its usefulness and DWN brand awareness.

2) A table-format for the variety (for Apple: eg: Name, Size, Chill Hours, Pollination, etc.). See an example here:

http://www.fallcreeknursery.com/Nurs...hart/index.htm

Anyway, I'm an experienced web developer with a new-found gardening hobby so feel free to contact me if I can be of assistance. I frequently visit the site so I feel it can be made more integrated.

[BethP]

Add info about blooming times. Early, mid, late, etc. My area needs mid to late bloomers, early bloomers would probably get nailed by an untimely frost. Also if any varieties are especially suited (or tolerant of) high humidity and temperatures like those in the southeast (where temps and humidity do a daily race to see who can get to 100 first). My specific zipcode average temps from the middle of may till the middle of september are all over 90. Night time temps are seldom below 75 for 2 of those months. Most fruit trees *hate* this LOL.

Great site overall.

[telos]

For those of us in hot weather regions, some cultural notes about which varieties can and can't handle high heat summers. The low chill varieties are an incredible step for horticulture, but low chill and high heat tolerance is not actually the same thing. I get about a month, sometimes as many as three where the summer temperatures are over 100F every day. I've seen the American Horticultural Society heat zone maps, but I've never seen them actually used. If something like that could become commonly used it would really simplify things.

Some articles about cultural practices for places that have large differences in the temperatures from day to day such as desert areas would be nice. While I don't personally live in a desert or near the ocean, it's a bit tricky to filter through the materials I find and piece together the advice that is actually useful.

The bloom time charts suggested by BethP would just need a regional note for where it was accurate and that it might not be accurate in all areas. Tungston is quite right that pollination charts are wonderful things to have on hand while ordering or even just planning. I had all kinds of trouble trying to figure out what would pollinate my Tulare cherry after the Brooks died. Most nurseries didn't have anyone or any resources to find out what would work.

[naclh2o]

Variety finder – Very useful as is but would be even better if a search parameter for rootstock was added. I’ve seen a few posts that indicated this would be popular.

[augendoc]

The two most important things i look for on the DWN website as a home orchardist are chill hours and ripening time. I am a firm believer in the concept of sequential ripening lest i be up to my ass in ripe fruit all at one moment in time.

Here in eastern Arroyo Grande the chill hours are less than in Modesto but a bit higher than coastal southern california. I am willing to try a new variety and push the chill hour requirement, but I'm not going to plant an 800 chill hour variety when at best I probably get 450 chill hours in a good year.

I note that some of the website info on chill hours for a specific variety is inconsistent. For example, your website may list a chill hour requirement of 500 hrs whereas the catalog from Bay Laurel Nursery, who sells a heckuva lot of your product may list it as 250-300.

The lower the chill hour requirements the more trees you are likely to sell, especially in the southern california and California coastal areas.

thanks.

[evergreen]

I agree with the previous poster. There is far too much conflicting info out there on chill hours, from the DWN site to your retail nurseries to the labels on the actual trees. I've asked questions about chill hours for certain trees on this forum before and Tom or Ed has given me an even more up-to-date answer, but then the website itself still carries the old info. We understand it's not an exact science and it takes time to establish data, but shouldn't someone regularly review the numbers on your site and see if they need updating? Thanks, in so many other ways, for a great site and great trees.

[Craig]

Thanks for the comments regarding inconsistent estimated chilling requirements. We're on it