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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?
---Another blurb I posted about this topic: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....
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
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?
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.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.
More references in this post:
Subject: Applestar's 2017 Garden
...and these...
Subject: Applestar's 2017 Garden
Subject: Applestar's 2017 Gardenapplestar 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
What I post are cropped screenshots. The actual Numbers page is a bit more of a "drawing board"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.
It started raining heavily while I was finishing up, so only a bad tele-photo from the upstairs window
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.