Gardening Journal

Every gardener who keeps a journal has their own reason for keeping it. Some people just like to keep a written record of the progress of their garden. Other people keep a journal for their future reference so that they will know exactly what they did when and how that worked out.

While growing up, even though our vegetable garden was over an acre, plus we had “truck patches,” we never kept a journal. The garden was plowed, harrowed, and fertilized along with the fields. We just planted when it was time to plant using seeds that were saved from previous year's garden. The garden was watered when it needed it and the produced picked when it was ready. Simple. But now as I get older, I wish that records would had been kept, so I would know exactly what was done and when. For now the wisdom of that era is gone forever.

My gardening journal is little different than other journal's that I have seen. I keep my journal in a three-ring binder, with each year having its own section. In each section I have:

Page 1: Sketch of garden: Just what it sounds like, I have a sketch of what vegetable and where I planted it in my vegetable garden. I also list if and what was added to soil such as compost or manure.

Page 2: Chart of weekly average temperature and rainfall: In this section I also have a place for notes so I can add if there was unusual weather conditions such as high humidity, hail, or a tornado.

Page 3 - ?: Plants Planted: Each variety of vegetable or fruit has its own page. On this page I list:

• Name of plant and variety
• How many were planted
• Day planted
• Day sprouted
• Day transplanted (if applicable) and how many were transplanted
• Date budded
• Date of first harvest
• Number of harvests and how much harvested
• Pictures of the plants and their produce through out the growing and harvest times.
• Empty packet of the seed taped to the page
• A place for notes

Other things that you might want to include:

• A large envelope for keeping receipts and gardening notes that you collect over the year
• A suggestion sheet for the next year. Included on this page could be plants or a new variety that you want to try.
• Watering chart. How often did you water and for how long.
• Results of any soil tests and how the soil was amended

If you don't already keep a gardening journal, I hope that this will help to give you some ideas on how to set up your own journal. If you already have a gardening journal, please feel free to share how yours is set up in the comment section below. Thank you for reading and visiting my blog. :-)