What's that saying ~ "Be careful what you ask for." Well, you asked for it, Trant. ;) Hope you're not sorry you asked when you're done reading what will likely be an extremely looooong post. ;) Basing it as a blog would be great, with links to separate sections (databases) for what's being grown (veggies, flowers, fruit trees, etc.), suppliers/sources (seed companies, local nurseries, etc.), each garden or section of the yard ("Potager", "Veggie Garden", "Front Flowerbed"), etc. Linkability ~ It'd be nice if every time I typed something in the blog that there was an entry for ("Rattlesnake Beans", "Natural Gardener", "Pinetree Seeds", "Potager Garden", etc.), it would automatically link it to the page for that item. For me, searchability system-wide (in titles, entries, everything) would be important. That way, in December when I'm trying to figure out which tomatoes (for instance) to order, it would be easy to do a system-wide search for any mention of "tomatoes" or "tomato" so I could refresh my memory on what kinds I've planted in all years past and read notes on how they did. It'd be nice to have the option of narrowing the search to just titles, just notes, etc. And would be great to be able to search phrases as well, a la Google ~ "seed starting" or "setting out". Easy access to information multiple ways ~ it'd be nice if clicking on a month or day in a list (in calendar form maybe?) would bring up whatever I wrote on that day, AND when I clicked on an entry for the aforementioned Rattlesnake Beans and went to that page, it'd be nice to have a list at the bottom (with clickable dates/synopses) of every date/entry where I talked about it in the "blog". About the separate sections for each "thing" (supplier, variety, etc.)... ~~ Supplier/source section: A separate page for each where I could type in address, what I received from them, when, who I talked to, etc. ~ even any notes I wanted to add. A nice feature would be, during entering of a new entry, being able to choose from a list of suppliers I'd already entered and it would give a link to the supplier's page from the veggie's entry. Being able to designate the specific type of source would be nice, too (mail order seed house, local nursery or store, internet trade, gift from friend, personally saved seed, any others you can think of). ~~ Plant section: An auto-fill feature here would be great. When I go to add a new entry, it would be nice for the "flow" of it to go like this: Choose "new entry" ~ next window allows me to choose between vegetable, flower, fruit tree, etc. (I choose "vegetable") ~ next window gives a list of all veggies (I choose "Bean, Pole, Dry") ~ next window is a list of all "Bean, Pole, Dry"s I've already added, if any, along with "Add new". If I choose "Add new", it'll auto-fill the basic cultural info specific to pole beans grown for drying, but leave all other things blank. If I choose "Rattlesnake Beans", it'll auto-fill everything I've already input on that entry, including past years' notes ~ or maybe it'd be better if it'd just take me to the "update entry" page for that item where I could note that I'm growing it again in 2009. ~~ Garden/Yard Area section: Separate pages for each garden or section of yard. If there would be any way possible to draw a garden map in this, that would be perfect, but I imagine the coding for this would be awfully labor-intensive, huh? At the very least, a specific place to upload an image of a garden map would be good, with a link to that featured prominently on the page. It'd also be nice to closely tie previous entries to new entries. On those Rattlesnake Beans, it'd be nice to be able to go to that entry and see all previous years' info/notes on the same page, atleast via a list of clickable links. If I click on the Rattlesnake entry, I'd love to see a page with variety name at the top, cultural info below that, and then the notes from all years below that, maybe with a couple inches of each note showing and "Read more" link at end of each, or a list of dates when I talked about them in the blog and/or added notes somewhere, or simply each year listed as links to a page that shows the list for whichever year clicked. It'd also be nice if the most recent was always at the top. Probably the best thing you could do in designing garden software would be to make everything changeable since we're all so different in our likes and dislikes. For instance, when wanting to read the "blog" or look back on previous years, it'd be nice to have the option of choosing from a menu that looks like a calendar, or one that is in list form (all text). Other options that'd probably be nice would be an on/off for the auto-fill (maybe even the ability to turn it off on different sections ~ for instance, off on source/supplier section, but leave on in the plant section), being able to "hide" cultural info on each plant entry page so it just shows variety name and list of notes, the ability to see brief synopses of each note/blog entry on each variety page OR just see a list of dates where it was mentioned, the aforementioned search narrowing, and even the ability to move things around on the entry pages (for instance, I may like having "Bean, Pole, Dry" at the top of the Rattlesnake bean entry, where someone else would prefer "Rattlesnake Bean" to be at the top), and I'm sure I'll think of other things. Something else nice would be the ability to customize page background colors, text colors, font, text size, and even to insert some background images. The ability to automatically publish each "blog" entry to the internet would be wonderful. Of course the user would have to set up a blog first on our own, but if your software could work with it, that would be grand. Can it weed my garden for me, too? *snicker* And images! MUST have the ability to add multiple images. For me, pictures of my garden are so important ~ sometimes they're the only type of record-keeping I can do. Being able to add them to each variety's page as well as insert them into the "blog" (and publish them when the blog entry is published) would be so incredibly handy. If you're serious about designing garden software, email me. I can explain this in pictures a lot better ~ I could draw it out in Paint )or on paper and scan it) as flowcharts (I think that's the right word ~ kind of like family trees are drawn out) and give examples of what each page looks like in my head, and email it to you. If you're serious, I'd love to help you with this as I'm desperate for some sort of garden journal software that's truly user friendly and genuinely easy to use (keeping a garden journal, for me, is almost a chore, so anything that's so easy a child could do it would greatly increase my chances of actually using it). All of the ones I've ever seen just aren't user friendly, no matter what they say.

I use a spreadsheet. MS Excel but Open Office is completely free and would work almost as well. Just create fields for these items...name of plant, where purchased, price, annual notes, etc. There is some company that provides software to the likes of the RHS, BBG, Longwood etc. for plant tracking. I forget their name but I've seen their website before. Most of those programs, like the ones used by libraries to catalog their books, run on a commercial RDBMS although that is completely transparent to the end purchasers.

I use this program for daylilies but it also has other features for gardening. Here is a link that might be useful: Plantstep

I use a landscaping program and Excel, both. I use Excel for the information-heavy stuff and the landscaping program for visual planning. I'm a bit of a compulsive planner (ok, it's probably a clinical condition, I'm such a compulsive planner . . . my husband asked me if I like the planning better or the gardening), so the landscaping program lets me play around with what looks good where, without actually having to rip plants up all the time. Of course, it has a fairly limited selection of plants, although you can add more, and I have. It's very time-consuming to add new plants. For my purposes, I mostly just use something that looks vaguely similar, and then rename it so I can recognize it later. I'm hoping this will come in handy for locating varieties of daylilies, hostas, irises, and such in the future, when the tags inevitably go missing. In line with the compulsive planning thing, I made a database from a chart in one of my books. I should probably sell it to the publisher, they could include it on a CD with the book. It took me many hours to make, but now if I want to find, say, a plant hardy to zone 2 that's over 4 feet tall, likes full sun, and has pink flowers, I can do that. It was worth every hour, I feel so satisfied when I use it. That and my veggie planner that tells me when to start seed, my earliest possible planting date, and my latest possible planting date (among many other things) are my favorite worksheets in Excel. I could go on and on (oh, wait, I already did), but I think you probably get the idea. I did look a little bit for a more sophisticated program, but Excel is so versatile that it's hard to beat. As for photo-shopping out the weeds, that's a fantastic idea! I'll never have to pull a weed again, right?