Garden Journaling or Logging

 

This week I finally got the chance to get my hands dirty.
It was time to get some seeds started for summer flowers and I was glad to get something, anything growing.

Petunias, Pelargonium's, Trailing  Snapdragons, Swan River Daisies and Heliotrope are all under the lights to start germinating. Also the Verbena seeds are in the dark to start their germination and I even have Viola seeds planted in containers which are setting in the refrigerator for their
three weeks of cool down before they are all set out under the lights or the one window which affords me a little sunlight.

I do not know about other gardeners but the facts are that I am getting older and with adding more flowers to the garden beds and even adding new beds was getting to be a bit confusing  for me at times. With over three hundred and counting different plants in the garden I was forgetting what and where I planted some of them. And that was not counting all of the different bulbs or rhizomes to try to keep track of so I would not dig into them when planting a new flower. The slaughter of  tulip bulbs and daffodils from the spade had me wanting to kick myself.
This all being said and my bad memory confessed to, I wanted to share how I have learned to keep track of my garden beds and the flowers in them. I have adapted a three ringed notebook to keep everything together,nothing fancy and even crude but it serves my purposes well.

One of the things I have is an alphabetical and numbered list of all of my flowers and bulbs. Also numbered spaces and names are left blank of my favorite plants of which I may want to add a new variety to later on such as phlox or echinacea,  all I have to do is add in their names.
I also add plant names for  those plants or shrubs I may not have any of now in the garden but I want or plan to  add later on, such as maybe a Joe Pye Weed or Astrantia of which I do not have now but want to add to the garden. Then if I purchase it all I have to do is add the variety names.

  You may think this is a lot of bother but it helps me immensely in keeping track and especially  when adding
those flowers to bed diagrams.
My garden bed diagrams are very crude and are just hand drawings of a bed. The plants are then written on the bed diagram sheet with their numbers and then the numbers are added to the bed diagram. When you get so many flowers , and you will, you will not have room to write all of the flowers into the bed diagram but you can add a lot of numbers to a diagram. This way I know where every flower or bulb is planted in that particular bed.

 

Also added to the journal is seed starting worksheets.
This is the worksheet of the seeds I started this week.
On the fact sheet, which you can print off from Martha Stewart, is the date I sowed the seeds, when I planted them
out and notes on which I jot down when the seeds started growing, if they were hard to germinate, or if they did not germinate and a date if I re-sowed some.
Some years I had trouble with seeds such as Lantana. I made a note to not to even try them again.LOL! Or the Stock seeds that took forever to get started and then took forever to bloom. You can add your own little notes.

 

I also keep the seed packs which have pictures of the
flower  on them. For those who come in plain packets or seeds from friends I get a picture out of a gardening catalog or use a picture off of the internet from the company I bought them from just for my own use and keep them in the journal. At least I want to see what that flower was suppose to look like. Even if the Zaraha Zinnia did not look like the picture it was advertised as. LOL! I keep the seed packets and all the seed bills in a plastic sleeve in the journal.

In the journal I have notebook dividers for bulbs, Perennials, Shade Perennials, Roses, Hydrangeas, Shrubs and vines, etc.

In each of these divided categories I have sheets on each plant or bulb in the garden with the name,variety, where purchased, the date I purchased it, how much it cost and where  it is planted. I also add a picture and the growing instructions to the sheet from catalogs.

 

Or you can add the plant tag to the sheet or scan a copy of the tag and add it to the garden sheet. This keeps all of your information at your finger tips.

You may even want to take a picture of your plant blooming and add it to the sheet.

Here again I have plastic  sleeves which contain the invoices or register slips of the plants I have bought. This has gotten
me replacement plants so many times because I had the customer number and order numbers and the dates to
give to those nurseries from which they were bought.

There are many blogs and sites online to get worksheets and logs for your Garden Journal or records.

Such as:

Seed Worksheet at Martha Stewart.
Garden Tracker has all sorts of fun garden worksheets.
The Urban Extension even has a cute one for Children’s first garden.
Hobby Farms

or even seed envelopes for those swaps:
Seed Envelope templates at Blossom Swap.
Garden Time Online

There are so many sites for free printable gardening helps.
Do your own online search there is bound to be something to your liking.
I hope you at least got a few tips  and you can make them your own to help you in your gardening journaling.
But then maybe you all have good memories and know the names and where everyone of your plants and bulbs are located.
I just know the older I get and the more I get,
the more I forget. ;-)
Happy Gardening,
Lona