Good morning! In the cold days of January, gardeners everywhere use these days to dream and scheme, to plan and plot, and wish for warmer spring days to come. It’s armchair gardening season, folks! And it’s a perfect time to set up a garden journal for the coming year. I’m going to talk today about how to start a garden journal, and how it could be useful for your yard or garden.

Aug 2, 2014 - Explore Mary's Nest's board 'Keeping a Garden Notebook', followed by 2312 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about garden notebook, garden, garden journal. The Garden Journal is an important place to pass down information and foster creativity. I kept a garden journal for years but took a break about two years ago. Now, I am feeling re-energized and ready to dive back into my green book.

Why keep a garden journal?

I guess there are lots of reasons, and your reasons might be different from mine. If you garden for food, you might want to keep a journal to keep track of what vegetable varieties worked well or didn’t, when they were ready for harvest, and what crops you planted where. If you’re out in the dirt as a means of creative expression and stress relief, you might journal as a way to keep a creative record of what your gardens look like, what you might want to try next, or to sketch out new ideas for plantings or structures. Garden journals help you predict large scale weather patterns from year to year such as “usually cold and wet in early May” or “not much rain from July 4 to Aug 25”. A garden journal gives you a place to record, a place to learn, and a place to dream.

If you are any level of gardener, I really recommend that you begin to keep records in some way. But don’t worry – keeping a garden journal should be fun, not a chore. And there are no rules – you can do whatever suits you! So find a way that suits your own needs and your own personal working style and go with it

What to include in your garden journal?

Your garden journal can be as detailed as you want, or it can include just the very basics. Here are some things that you might consider keeping track of in your journal. Of course, you don’t have to do it all!

• plots or maps of your garden beds, with notation of what plants are where
• plant names, varieties, sun needs, watering needs, for things you’ve planted
• records of how many plants you bought, where they were planted, when, and how big they got
• date of planting, date of flowering, date of fruit production
• where you bought your plants, warranty information, receipts, coupons
• photos of your garden
• ideas to try out
• sketches of ideas
• list of plants you want to try
• information on plants that failed, when, and why
• plant tags/markers
• seed packets
• observations of weather, soil conditions, wildlife sightings
• records of when you divided perennials
• dates and amounts and types of fertilizer applications
• pest management dates and types and results
• for veggies: Crop rotation notes, pests and diseases, yields, dates of harvest
• for seed starters: dates of starts, hardening off, setting out, flower/fruit

What format should you use?

Digital

Some popular web-based journals are: www.DavesGarden.com, www.GreenThumbJournal.com and www.MyFolia.com. I haven’t used any of these, so I can’t give any recommendations, but the reviews are good and the volume of users seems to be solid. Maybe that’s the method for you?

Honestly? I haven’t found any software-based journal options or apps that get good enough reviews to mention them here. Maybe you know of some? if so, let me know in the comments section and I’ll be sure to update this article!

Lots of folks use good old fashioned word processor and spreadsheets to keep track of their garden data (can we consider any type of digital journalling to be old fashioned? I guess so…). You can keep a running document and include photos as the season goes by. if you want, at the end of the year you could print out your document and spreadsheet and keep them in a binder for easier reference in the coming years.

Some savvy users use EverNote to keep their data in digital form. I’m guessing there are other digital tools out there that could be useful, too. Do you know of some?

Printed

The bookstores are crowded with published garden journals for sale, it’s a matter of finding one you like and works for you! Some offer water-resistant paper as an added bonus for journalling in the garden. I have to admit, I’ve been tempted to buy several different ones, and in fact, I purchased one for my daughter-in-law for Christmas and *almost* kept it for myself instead. 🙂

On Pinterest you can find hundreds of free printables that you can print at home to create a custom journal. Just search “garden journal printable” and see how many choices you find!

And there are lots of choices for sale on Etsy, too. So many choices!

Notebook or sketchpad

This is actually the way I journal for my garden. I have a small half-sized spiral notebook that I keep. It’s small enough to draw and write on while I’m standing outside in the garden without being unwieldy. It’s big enough to hold decent sized garden plots or idea sketches. And it fits in my purse so I can take it with me to the garden center or nursery as I’m buying plants and materials. The main drawback to this option is that I can’t integrate photos to keep track of visual progress through the season. I guess I’ll just use this blog for that purpose. 🙂

Evernote Garden Journals

I like the fact that it’s a diary-style journal, with lists, observations, notes, ideas, and everything else all smooshed together in a timeline through the summer. It suits me, at least for now. Some of the charts and forms that you can find in the printable journal pages are intriguing, so I might incorporate some of those ideas into the journal this year. If I do that, I’ll probably paste the charts into the pages of the spiral notebook after I print them out.

Maybe I should note that in addition to the spiral notebook, I have a computer hard drive chock full of photos, and I have a shoebox full of seed packets and plant labels.

My Garden Journal

I’m happy to offer my services to you as the “most basic, unfussy gardener ever”. 🙂 I humbly share these photos of my garden journal to prove to you that yes, you can have an ugly, messy, hard-to-read garden journal and (1) the “pretty journal police” will not come hunt you down and (2) you will still get a lot of use and find a lot of joy in the process. Really, folks, don’t pressure yourselves on this. Just do what you like, and don’t worry what other people say (including me!).

Without further ado, here are some sample pages from my journal.

A simple half-size spiral notebook serves as my garden journal.

A typical garden plot – messy, out of scale, and filled with symbols only intelligible to me.

I try to keep track of variety names, and where things are planted in relation to each other. Black filled-in circles represent existing mature tree trunks, and I use them as rough placement markers. It’s all by eye – no measuring here!

I add markings as I add plants – and it gets tricky when I’ve been too far out of scale.

Here’s another example of a garden plot. I have several of these in the journal.

I keep notes on what is happening in the garden, and I also have lists of plants I want to try, or which might work well for certain situations in the gardens. The crossed-out ones here are plants I bought this year. It was great having this list with me at the nursery.

Different kinds of notes for different kinds of purposes. Anything goes!

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Here’s an example of a sketch coming to life. I drew this “idea sketch” while sitting on my side porch. I imagined where I wanted shrubs, trees, and other kinds of plants. Then I went to the nursery and made it happen! I wrote about it in a post called “How We Totally Transformed Our Side Yard“.

Here’s another idea sketch that has yet to be brought to life. An arbor/pergola for the front south side of the yard. Maybe this year?

The last entries I made last year were in November… and there’s plenty of room for more journalling in 2017.

Now it’s your turn

So this is a pretty good representation of what’s in my garden journal. Obviously, guys, I’m not saying that mine is the best ever. It’s missing all kinds of useful records because I didn’t do a good job of keeping up with it consistently, and I didn’t keep track of stuff you might want to track. My only point here is this: Start with something. Buy a pre-printed journal, or buy a notebook, or use something online, or just jot things down and put them in an envelope. But do something to start keeping a record of what you’re doing in the garden. Be as consistent as you can. Have as much fun with it as you want. Using a garden journal will make you a better gardener, and make your garden better.

Do you already use a garden journal system of some kind? What’s your method? Do you know of any good software that is worth the time and investment? I’m curious and would love to chat with you about it. Please drop a note in the comment section so we can compare notes.

Thanks so much for being here today!

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