The Cityfood Growers web based Planting Calendar provides city dwelling gardeners with an easy, accurate and objective method of establishing planting and harvesting times for vegetables and herbs (fruit trees will be in release 2) relative to the climate where the gardener is located. The overall aim is to maximise the food growing efforts of the gardener.

Food gardeners in cities at present find it challenging to gain objective, current and location relevant advice on when to plant and what to eat in season if they desire locally grown food. Planting guides in most books and on seed packets use very broad zones, such as “plant in spring in subtropical”. Such recommendations are prone to inaccuracy and can lead to weakened plants, poor yields and disappointed gardeners. Climate change has also added another layer of inaccuracy for growers because climate zones are usually based 50-100 year temperature averages. Plant nurseries sometimes sell seedlings out of season which have been grown in hot houses.

The Cityfood Growers Planting Calendar removes bias from planting recommendations and allows for the impact of climate change. It uses proven growing temperature profiles of plants and compares them to independent current temperature data from the nearest weather station in Australia to the gardener. Only Australian weather data will be used in the first release. Weather data will be progressively added for other countries, so gardeners from those countries can then also use the Planting calendar.

Calendar users can search by month to find suitable plants for the month or by plant to find suitable months for planting. Users are also warned of record high and low temperatures during a plant growing period. The temperature profile of the gardener location is set up when they register as members.

Take a member tour and see how easy it is to use and how much information you will receive on the 120 vegetables and herbs in our plant database.

Twenty key attributes are provided for 120 vegetables and herbs and a total of 600 varieties of these plants are provided in the data.

Members will also add their own localised comments on plants and plant varieties via the City Food Growers forum, for example a grower may have experienced very good results in growing an Iceberg variety Lettuce in his town between the months of April and June. This local knowledge can be shared via the Forum and easily searched by plant or location. Think of it as having a chat with the gardener over the back fence sharing on what works, but now your back fence has no boundary.

Take a member tour and use the plant search

There are many wonderful books on gardening and these are very worthwhile resources for any gardener. The gardening content at Cityfood Growers is made up of different areas:

• The plant and plant calendar content

• Garden tips – a summarised set of tips on food garden management in the following subject areas: garden planning, selecting plants, companion planting, soil management, garden implements, water management, insect and pest management, plant conditioners, harvesting, seed saving, container growing and organic agriculture methods such as, permaculture and biodynamics.

• Questions and answer content - users can post questions on the site forum for advice and will be responded to by gardeners

• Localised gardening advice - posted via the Forum and searchable by subject or location.

Cityfood Growers will never claim to be the ultimate source of all food gardening knowledge, but what makes it different from books is that user generated content will make it personal, localised and create opportunities for real connection between author and readers.

The Food Garden Market promotes the sale and consumption of food grown in and around cites. This will food from: organic farms near cities, backyard food gardeners (typically non-commercial growers), people who gather food from other people’s properties where it is grown in cities (particularly the case with fruit trees that often have large amounts of fruit not picked) or food grown at community and school food gardens.

The Food Garden Market will allow Cityfood Grower members:

• Unlimited postings of "produce for sale" on the marketplace,

• Unlimited postings of "produce wanted", where the member cannot find what they want.

• Build their seller credibility, by display of their profile and customer ratings

• To search for food by location and by food name and then make direct contact with the member listing the food for sale. This direct contact is aimed at building strong engagement between the members and facilitate face to face connection via market listings.

The Food Garden Market only provides the listing vehicle for the member advertisement and does not intend to get involved in the transaction between the poster and the buyer. The pricing of the transaction between the seller and buyer is up to them.

Take a member tour

The events calendar provides:

• An easy to use vehicle for any organisation that is a Cityfood Growers member to freely post events for display on the site events calendar. These would be events such as: community talks, gardening courses and training, workshops, open days at organic farms, conferences and podcasts on the media. The subject matter would be food gardening, organic food consumption, urban agriculture and environmental matters.

• As an extra promotional benefit to event listers, alerts via email would be automatically sent out to members who have opted to receive new event alerts.

• An easy to use hub of relevant events which can be searched by date, city, country and subject