Do you keep a journal?

[Purple Strawberry]

I am a first time vegetable gardner and am keeping a journal.

I am wondering does anyone else keep one or if it is the newbies only?

If you do keep one what information do you put in it and is it one you created yourself or a store bought one that you just fill in the blanks?

Angie
Hamilton, GA

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Well, I don't think it is just a newbie thing. However, that said, I have never kept very good garden records, except for indoor seed starting (I usually make a spreadsheet every year, so I don't forget to start something). I am actually trying to be better this year about keeping a good garden record. It is a good thing to do if you are organized enough and persistent about it.

I bought one of those composition notebooks that you can get just about anywhere that sells school supplies. My problem is that I always want to write in it neatly, but often if I want to record something I am in a hurry and scribble it down on a loose piece of paper.

 

[bid]

I try to keep a journal. I am much better at writing in it at this time of the season than I am later on in the summer. I just have a spiral bound notebook and I enter what I started or sowed on what date. When it sprouted, transplant dates and when it went out to the "real" garden.

I try and keep up with unusual temperature spikes and rainfall of course and what pests seem to really like a particular plant and whether or not they are a real problem. I really wish I had written down when I first found squash vine borer eggs last year.

The last entry in my "journal" is usually something like: grow again, plant earlier, plant later, closer spacing, space further apart or this plant isn't mean't for me to grow.

To me, keeping a journal is a learning process. I have done it for a few years and it gets more detailed every year as I look back and realize the information I left out. Just writing this I realize that I almost never list the date of my first harvest...and thats why I am growing things to begin with, for the harvest.

 

[patandchickens]

I think it's really, really valuable to keep track of certain information: temperatures (so you can figure out your REAL average last and first frost dates, plus any other temperature benchmarks that future years may find you wanting to know), and major milestones of plant development ('first crocuses blooming', 'trees leafing out', first tomato flower', 'rugosa rose blooming', that sort of thing).

It's also pretty useful to make notes, a couple times a year or at least at year's end, of what worked well and what never to do again and what planned changes you need to remember for next year.

I do the first thing in a daily notebook (we write down the day's temperature, am't of precip, and any noteworthy plant phenology events) and the second in the form of a zillion little scraps of paper intermixed in my great leaning pile of seed/plant catalogs.

I recommend the first tactic; not so much the second

JMO,

Pat

 

[vfem]

I printed some spread sheet type things with gardening planting times for my area. I've been scribbling in notes as I got and I keep it in my seed box.

As for a journal type writing I use my blog which is 100% for my gardening and what and when I did things. I need to do an update actually on what it growing in my lotus containers. The water is getting black and is thick with some sticky growth I'm unsure of. It didn't start happening until I put in water plant fertlizer.

I think a journal is a GREAT idea and you should really keep one. Maybe you'll find something that does WONDERFUL or horrible for you and you may forget and want to look it up in a couple of years.

(My blog is in my sig)

 

[dannyo]

Well I'm a complete noob, but I thought that keeping a journal would be a good idea. However I want to take it a bit farther and allow feedback to my journaling. So this morning I started a blog. I hope I'm able to keep up with it because I'm not the most reliable person. I figure at least if this year is a total failure I can read my blog next spring and do something else

 

[CARS]

No journal. I tried, just don't keep up with it. It's so easy to plan these things when it's 30 degrees out but when it's gardening season I am too busy doing so many different things that I don't sit down and monitor things.

I just create a map of what I have planted and what day I planted/date sprouted. After that I just weed, water and harvest. What I get, I get.

 

[digitS']

As an journal-keeper, I want to encourage your journal-keeping. I just went back and looked at my paper journal - as I've done many, many times before.

Beginning in 1988, I kept a record of my seed orders. Only a very few seeds are purchased locally. Heck, the garden centers have all the same varieties in a half-dozen different paper packets . Seed orders give me a fairly good record of what I've grown over the last 20 years.

Perhaps my "best" days of (paper) journal writing was between 1992 and 2001. I kept loose notebook paper and a pen beside the bed. About once a week I'd write something about the weather, plantings, problems in the garden, harvest, etc.

Ten years of this sort of thing, gave me a basis for scheduling what I'm up to in the garden. I still use this information. With life, timing is everything (somebody once said ).

So, what happened to my loose leaf journal in the new millennium? I began visiting gardening forums. My garden journal (if that is what one would call it) amounts to my comments here, with just a little extra research thrown in.

Find some way to do it - even if it is intermittent and sketchy. It'll help a lot !

Steve

 

[setter4]

Well, I don't think it is just a newbie thing. However, that said, I have never kept very good garden records, except for indoor seed starting (I usually make a spreadsheet every year, so I don't forget to start something). I am actually trying to be better this year about keeping a good garden record. It is a good thing to do if you are organized enough and persistent about it.

I bought one of those composition notebooks that you can get just about anywhere that sells school supplies. My problem is that I always want to write in it neatly, but often if I want to record something I am in a hurry and scribble it down on a loose piece of paper.

Are you my twin lost a birth???? This sounds exactly like me! lol

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Well, hey, I always wished I had a twin, setter4, so maybe?