We're starting to get some ink from the news releases we sent out to promote the project. If you spot articles, please let us know. Email cdc25@cornell.edu

Vegetable Web site unites gardeners and scientists - Detroit Free Press [1/7/2005]

Over the holidays, I was reading an anthology of garden writing when I ran into this quote from Liberty Hyde Bailey, pioneering horticulturist and founder of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences here at Cornell:

The more numerous and diverse the varieties of any plant, the more successful will be its cultivation over a wide area, because the greatest number of different conditions -- as soils, climages and uses -- will be satisfactorily met.

--Liberty Hyde Bailiey, The Survival of the Unlike, 1896

For more about Bailey, see: http://www.bsp.msu.edu/Background/BaileyBio.cfm

To help us grow this site and make it more useful, we need your help adding new varieties and new seed sources.

Within hours of opening up the site to the general public, I received this message from one of our beta-testers:

Incidentally Cornell has done a thorough review of five Charentais melons and selected two: Romulus and Robinson as meeting their highest rating. The problem is that they are only available through Clause-Tezier's North American agent, Harris-Morgan. I don't know with whom or if they distribute those selections to home gardeners. Any way of your finding out for us? I would like to trial them.

Use these to help promote the site. There is a long version (379 words) followed by a shorter version (225 words).

Long version:

Cornell Website Helps Gardeners Choose Vegetable Varieties

FOR RELEASE: December 1, 2004 379 words
Contact: Lori Bushway | Office: 607-255-5918 | E-mail: ljb7@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. â?? Gardeners poring over seed catalogs this winter have a new resource to help them choose which vegetable varieties to grow.

â??Our Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners website makes it easy for gardeners to compare varieties and become more aware of the wide diversity of varieties that are available,â?? says Lori Bushway, Senior Extension Associate in Cornell Universityâ??s Department of Horticulture.

We've spent a lot of time getting this site to launch. It's been a joint effort of Cornell Cooperative Extension programmers, Department of Horticulture staff, more than 50 volunteer testers and others.

We're proud of the site. But we still have lots of ideas that we want to incorporate into the site as it grows. More importantly, though, we want to know how you think the site could be improved. Please share with us any ideas you have for additional features and functionality. Just click on add a new comment, below.

A big thank you to the 52 folks who visited the beta version of our site, rated and reviewed vegetables, and provided feedback that helped us improve the site. Weâ??re getting ready to send out news releases now to invite more folks to come to the site. Meantime, you can continue to visit the site, look for new varieties you want to grow next season, and add your own variety observations to the site.

Let me point out a few or the new features we added based on your testing:

This project news area. (Donâ??t forget to check out the poll in the lefthand column.)

Edit/delete feature. If you made a mistake or have changed your mind about your rating or review, you can now edit your review or delete duplicates.