An Innovation For Australian Fruit Tree Gardeners

April 24, 2010 - PRLog -- Australian company Cityfood Growers has just released what it believes to be the first gardening web site in the world that integrates detailed local climate information with the climate profile of fruit trees.  

“Our site greatly reduces the time taken by Australian gardeners to research fruit tree cultivars suitable for their local climate and increases the range of cultivars they can grow. We provide an objective view for gardeners across major fruit tree breeders in Australia”, says Cityfood Growers founder, Peter Kearney

The web site at www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au stores climate information for every state, city and town in Australia. This is combined with climate profiles of over 700 cultivars of the 40 most common fruit tree crops grown in all climate zones of Australia. The fruit tree cultivar information has been collected from a range of sources including Australian fruit tree breeders and Government agricultural bodies.

Subscribers of the web site can create a local climate profile in seconds and even customise it for their local micro-climates. They can search for fruit trees by simply clicking on a crop name, such as Apple or crop group such as citrus. The site then lists all cultivars suitable for their climate and shows early, mid or late cropping varieties, dwarf and heritage varieties. Once the cultivar information is opened, cultivar breeders are displayed and can be contacted directly or the subscriber can request their local nursery acquire the cultivar for them.

Subscribers can then click through to detailed information on planting, cultivating, pruning and organic treatment of common pests and diseases for every crop. “Our site already includes a vast amount of fruit tree growing content. We will be progressively adding more fruit tree crops and new cultivars of all crops as they become available on the market”, says Peter Kearney.

This fruit tree information is combined with extensive content on over 130 vegetables, herbs and grains, which is also linked into the local climate profile of the subscriber. “The web site provides a comprehensive online toolkit for organic gardeners, no matter what climate they live in or their level of gardening expertise. The site uniquely structures a lot of complex gardening information into easy to understand searches so that gardening questions can be answered quickly”, says Peter Kearney.

The web site also includes community features to connect site users and an online market where subscribers can post their locally grown food.

Cityfood Growers focuses its organic gardening educational services on hobby food gardeners, communities and schools. The business commenced in 2006. The first release of its web site was in mid 2008, with fruit tree content being part of its third release in 2010.

The web site also stores detailed climate information for every state, town and city of the USA and New Zealand and all functions of site are also available for those countries. Local partners are planned to be established for those countries during 2010-2011.

The company, based in Brisbane, was founded by Peter Kearney, an experienced organic and biodynamic gardener, educator and technologist. www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au

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Cityfood Growers provides home gardeners with easy access online to localised knowledge on growing their own fruit, vegetables and herbs with organic gardening methods. Gardening workshops, urban agriculture consulting and food gardening content for schools also provided.