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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

GARDENING JOURNAL - what, how, when ?

Do you keep a gardening journal or some kind of record of your garden? I've tried different methods -- at first scribbled notes in a pocket size notebook... a 5 year pre-printed bound volume sold as "Gardening Journal"... looseleaf agenda/diary... sketches on graph paper, Sketches in sketching app... all these different scraps taped together on looseleaf 3 ring binder note papers... 3 ring plastic report sleeves.....

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Through it all, posting photos and comments here on Helpful Gardener forum has become a solid record of happenings and doings from each season.

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I posted this a while back --

Subject: Does anyone keep an orchard journal?
applestar wrote:I've tried different gardening journals, and by far the easiest is to just make an entry in the calendar app. I indicate time if time of day is significant, or just mark it as an all day activity if not. It's easily searchable, etc. and can go back for years if you don't set it up to erase old entries.

I need a way to link photos to the calendar entries, my iPad native calendar app has a field for URL and I could potentially use that if my photos were organized in albums at sites like phtobucket or flickr, for example. But I saw an app recently that let's you scrapbook photos to the calendar.

In iOS7, the photo library/streams can be displayed by calendar, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. iPhoto displays by timeline, too.

I also keep a separate spreadsheet record for different beds with each column representing 1/3 of each month. That spreadsheet is intended more for keeping track of crop rotation -- planting, growing, and harvesting --- and I note soil prep and amendments.

To some extent, threads and posts on THG also act as my record for individual projects.... :wink:

Someday, I'd like to be able to integrate all the data in an easily searchable and accessible form -- or maybe at least a master list of WHERE to find all the recorded info because I don't think I'll remember it all :roll:
---Another blurb I posted about this topic:

Subject: Applestar's 2016 Garden
Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:50 pm
applestar wrote:I'm using Apple's iOS version of Number's on an iPad.

Here's a blurb I wrote about it before --

Subject: Best comprehensive app or website for edible gardening?
applestar wrote:I do a lot of my planning using iPad Numbers. I seem to be opening that app a lot right now. It has some unique capabilities that is great for sketching and planning the garden beds. It's spreadsheet functions are great for calculating and tracking date field data like days to germination and harvesting.

But I have ended up creating three different projects customized to different requirements, and Numbers can't reference each other's cells or tables or sheets (I don't know if that's different on the desktop version). I'd like to be able to make changes/corrections in one and have the others reflect that.

It has some other limitations: I need It to be able to manage series of nested sort parameters. For tracking some complex information, I need a relational database that can handle the 3-D and maybe even 4-D correlations and be able to handle multiple associated images both local and weblinks -- that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm playing with a home inventory app right now to see if I can modify the parameters. I also need a drawing app that can handle more elaborate drawings than just fixed geometric shapes, handle layers and group objects.

I can post examples screen shots if you would like to see.
They've since made some improvements including better sorting capabilities and ability to group objects. I really like being able to place different tables/spreadsheets as objects. It also lets me import photos and crop and size them so I can keep progress snapshots of the beds and seedlings. 8)

Image
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More references in this post:
Subject: Applestar's 2017 Garden

...and these...
Subject: Applestar's 2017 Garden
applestar wrote:Folks who are expert at spreadsheet data manipulation will probably chuckle at my amateurish delight, but here are a few of the ways I use the functions to keep track of the seed starting progress :D

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Subject: Applestar's 2017 Garden
applestar wrote:Whew! I think I finished planting all the tomatoes that can be squeezed into the Sunflower House + Sunflower House Extension beds (SFH + SFHX). I'll finish by planting some peppers in the remaining SFHX space and then will try to plant lots of basils and possibly carrots and maybe some onions to fill in. Some kind of beans -- pole beans on the arch trellis and some kind of bush beans, adzuki, edamame, etc. as space opens up after the garlic are harvested.

Image

It started raining heavily while I was finishing up, so only a bad tele-photo from the upstairs window :()

Image
What I post are cropped screenshots. The actual Numbers page is a bit more of a "drawing board"
Image

I know what a I am looking at, but as I was recently reminded with reference to my collages, maybe not quite obvious unless explained in detail.

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Since last year or so, I have upgraded from a calendar app to a journal for keeping daily records. Here's a screenshot. That ToDo entry I started this year has been very useful for keeping me on track. I use the "set to current date and time" to keep it moving forward, and cut and paste things I did from it to a daily "Done Today" entry.

This version of this app only lets you attach one locally stored photo to each entry, but you can set the entry to "photo date and time" and "photo geolocation" Which means you can basically go back in time and time stamp your entry to when you snapped the picture. I might fine tune the way I make use of that feature. I can add additional photo within the body of the entry using image codes from a hosting site, which works out since I already do that when posting to the forum.

By creating entries set to future dates, I can create reminders.

Image

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ID jit
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Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 10:00 am
Location: SE New England: zone twilight or 5b... hard for me to tell some days.

I have been a 3-ring binder person most of my life... Started out as the kid with nimble finger and good eyes who could tie flies (for trout fishing). Got a quick course in keeping stuff organized and kept up the practice with a lot of my other hobbies. Oddly I don't do that for gardening. Every spring I sort of sketch out the garden and what I planted where and a moth later I have no idea where "the map" is and what is what.

One thing I have done is sort of a photo journal of a large flower garden. Take pictures form the same five spots every couple of weeks and stack them up in a thumbnail gallery so I can see what is growing where and when. Goal with that garden is to have a least on thing blooming through the entire season and have things spaced neatly and making some kind of visual sense. This way I can overlap the early season iris, tulips and daffis with the later season daisy kind of thing and spread the stuff out evenly around the season long green fox glove, siberian iris and the like. Also helps with mixing earlier tulips with later ones so there are tulips in the same general area longer.

bri80
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Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2016 5:12 pm
Location: Portland, OR

I kept a journal my first year or two, but stopped. I found that I didn't keep up with it as much as I'd hoped, or looked back on it for insight as much as I'd thought. I do, however, leave myself quick little notes on my phone. Things like "space indeterminates further apart" and stuff, basically little corrections for next year so I have it in my head when laying out the garden.

Like you, this year's thread with photos and updates is more documentation than I've ever had! Which is a big reason I keep updating it. :)

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I tried keeping a notebook but I had a hard time keeping up with it. I needed to organize it differently since when I wanted to look back on the dates I planted things to find out how long it took to germinate or days to harvest, I had to go back and find it.
Instead I went to using the plant markers. I have done this for years with orchids. I write down the date acquired and where I got it from, date of bloom, division or re potting. I don't keep records of fertilizing, but since I do that all or nothing, I could keep a log of that separately. Probably on the fertilizer bucket or a calendar.
On the label of the veggies I usually write what they are and the dates they were planted. If the seeds were old and it was a germination test, I write the year of the seeds. I usually don't keep germination records but I probably could do that with a calendar as well. Flowering and harvest dates could be written on the label. Labels are the best way I have of keeping track of the history of a plant. Photos of the garden are the best way to keep a visual record of what the garden looks like throughout the year. Photos also capture plants I would otherwise not have noticed.
For plants that are perennial, I usually don't even have labels. I used to have labels for all the plants in the yard, but those were metal labels that were attached to the plants. Since I know most of my plant names, I don't have too many labels, but I do try to keep labels on the roses since I don't remember the names of all of them.
For the seeds, I usually write on the back of the packet the date I planted the seeds.
It was easier for me to keep a visual log by just taking pictures of the garden. The camera has date and time on the photos and it is a good way for me to keep tract of a lot of plants that would otherwise go unnoticed. Like when something bloomed and even how much light there was in summer.

Keeping a journal on this forum was another way for me to keep a record of things that went on throughout the year. Weather usually affects all of our growing conditions from place to place and year to year. It is also a good way to keep track of trends. Usually when the birds and bees are doing well, so are the plants since there is lots to eat. The trend is for hotter summers and this year more summer rain, that means that I need heat tolerant veggies and ones that can take summer deluges. I am also finding things blooming out of season. Trends noted in other gardens gives me a heads up that I might have to change my strategy too. Like the early warming trend this year. It is also a good learning opportunity for ideas from different gardeners on what works well and what doesn't and some handy tricks like olla pots, Florida weaves, SIPs, and the different ways people garden.

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Yay! I just received confirmation for some more seeds I bought (shhhh! :roll: ) and, in the process of copy/pasting the list, discovered how to label the hyperlinks to the webpage of the item in the Numbers table.

It went something like......huh? Why are these names underlined and look different? Hmmm... oh look I can double tap it... WOW these are links! Now HOW the heck do you create these —etc. etc. until I figured it out. Image


I knew that if you typed in a valid link, it became a working hyperlink, and I used to add a separate column for them when I really wanted to be able to reference the page for detailed description of the variety, but always felt that was a nuisance extra column (with often very long link). Now I can just attach the link to the name of the variety.

I love efficiency. ;)



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