Couple of questions regarding orchid data/information management.
1. Do you keep track of your orchid data?
2. If so, what orchid information do you keep track of? (ie date acquired, acquired from, current condition, etc.)
3. What method or software or program do you use to manage and organize your orchid data? (ie physical notebook, word processing software, excel, databases, etc.)
I regret not keeping track of my orchid information when I first started growing orchids and encourage those of you just getting started with orchids to keep track of some basic information about your orchids. At the very least you should keep track of which orchids you've acquired, when you acquired them and who you acquired them from. It's also helpful to keep track of which orchids you've killed in order to avoid purchasing those same orchids in the future.
If you grow your orchids outdoors year around then I also highly recommend keeping track of temperature highs and lows that your orchids have tolerated. This information is useful for others growers contemplating growing similar orchids outdoors in climates with similar temperature fluctuations. For example,
Los Angeles,
Buenos Aires,
Sydney and
Cape town all have fairly similar highs and lows. If orchid growers in those locations share with each other their costly trial and error orchid success/failure information then other growers do not have to needlessly reinvent the wheel.
Currently I am using MS Access to keep track of my orchid information and was contemplating creating a simple step by step visual tutorial for using MS Access to keep track of orchid data but first wanted to see if there were enough people out there who currently have MS Access on their computers to warrant the time and effort to do so.