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Ask HN: Is there a public database of plants?

20 points by openfuture ↗ HN
I'm looking for greenhouse design resources and would appreciate links to good information regarding that.. but then I realized I don't know nearly enough about what I can actually grow (and why) so I would like to know if there is a database/wiki documenting everything you need to know about plants like: utility, ideal conditions (inputs), lifecycle (outputs), synergy (with other plants) etc. ?

If not, which sources would you recommend for aggregating the information required to build one? (I've found several already but none is comprehensive enough to be a total solution).

I'd like to know how much is possible with a fully artificial climate, how expensive/efficient current designs are, bottlenecks etc.

This feels like a pretty important project, a place for people around the globe to collaborate on improving agricultural knowledge. Especially since interest in urban agriculture seems to be rising and urban people like their apps :)

Normally I start by doing my own research but I thought it would be interesting to ask here to get the discussion.

Thanks!

6 comments

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stusmall
It might not be exactly what you are looking for but we find the comments in Baker Creek[1] extremely useful. Generally we look for people commenting who live near buy or in similar climates and use that in guiding what plants to go with. There are often heirloom varieties that thrive in my climate where the mainstream strains would struggle.

1. http://www.rareseeds.com/store/

clock_tower
That sort of database would be great to have, and I wouldn't be surprised if it exists already in one or another national agricultural-extension service. ("Agricultural extension" is an old -- 1914 -- term for continuing education for farmers, giving advice on crop selection, land management, etc.) The US's is CSREES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_State_Research,_Ed...

(Wikipedia describes their homepage as https://nifa.usda.gov/ . If that's really the right link, it could use a serious redesign...)

hanniabu
I would agree this is a much needed resource for humanity to move forward and overcome our food crisis. While there is a lot of information out there for farming in soil, there is nearly no information for hydroponics. The information isn't transferable either. In hydroponics there are meant growing techniques and depending on those techniques there will be different tolerances for plant spacing and water requirements. The level of nutrients, light, pH, ds, etc should all remain the same however (unless it's aquaponics). The plant spacing and water requirements are a very large part though, and not knowing that definitely for each setup tends to cause startups a lot of time and money figuring this out.

I worked on 2 state of the art growing projects as the lead engineer and this is a huge hindrance on innovation in this field. I applied to YC research for a grant to continue work on this issue and make the results openly available but unfortunately I was not a finalist. If anybody knows of any other grants that are available which this type of research would be eligible for please let me know.