I have the same problem. I am excited about gardening, but not nearly as much about record keeping. I asked the folks at the botanical garden for their insight, and--surprise! surprise!--they said the most efficient and fun way to do this is to keep a blog.

Come to think of it. You don't need to read through a bunch of entries to find the one you are looking for, as you would have to with a paper journal. For instance, if you want to know when you last pruned that Early Girl tomato, you only need to type in a few keywords and up comes the record. You can easily add pictures where appropriate, which saves you the trouble of having to organize pictures. If you pick a blog that allows you to tag pictures independently from the blog posts, you can even have a kind of slide show of that one plant at different times throughout the season. And the bonus is that, if you do go public, people will readily help you out by giving you advice on how to keep critters at bay, how to identify a plant disease and how to stake that zucchini squash that just won't grow straight. You could make new gardening friends with whom you could swap seeds, exchange contact info for sources of releasable beneficials (and team up for group buy), etc.

I think blogging is the way to go. It saves you a lot of time, it allows you to have all your records at your fingertips and it is much more enjoyable than any other method.

I am planning on writing a blog next season. In fact, I will most likely start this winter, and my first post will probably be about my seed order.

Does anybody here have a blog that they started just for record keeping?

Happy record keeping!

On two occasions I kept long threads about garden projects I was doing. My purpose was to share the experience with other GW members. The result was that I have far better records of those two projects than I have for any other gardening. My entries were timely and detailed. They had photos. And, of course, all the entries were time and date stamped.

So, I would say your idea is a good one. Even if no one else reads it, it will serve your purpose well.

Jim

I started a blog 3 years ago as a way to keep records and it's been very helpful. I can't count how many times I've referred back to past entries for some reason or another.

The trick is keeping up with it though. This year I've been way too busy and haven't updated it since June. Whoops.

Here is a link that might be useful: my garden blog

I feel that this would be an excellent way to keep records of your growing activities, and something to accompany a written record. I admit I personally fail on both accounts. There are a plethora of blogging sites out there and I was wondering if anyone has found one that's best suited to keeping growing records, or does it really make a difference? What's your favorite site? Thanks!

Greg
Southern Nevada

Thanks for the replies so far...and I'm curious also about the best site.

I signed up to this folia garden tracking site, but found it to be way, way too much work for me. If you really want to keep detailed records I bet it would be great though.

http://myfolia.com/

Here is a link that might be useful: folia

I have found that a combination of writing down notes to transfer to a saved Word document is helpful. Just in case there is ever a problem accessing my blog in the future. I do this in conjunction with posting pictures and information on my blog. The good, the bad, and the intriguing. If you view my link I believe there is a spot at the top to click in order to start your own blog. It is free and easy to set up.
Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Kim's Garden

I think so.

i have recently been trying to post a monthly garden tour which is a pretty good way for a lazy gardener like me to track progress.

Other bloggers are much more industrious, tracking pounds of harvest, calculating what it would cost to purchase at market, and even inputting annual costs so they can track the break even point.

One blog i visit links to a whole separate blog that is mostly just statistics about planting dates and harvests.

If you tend to put things off you can join in on activities like Harvest Mondays where gardeners from around the country blog about their weekly harvest.

For me it has also been a good way to connect with some gardeners in my zone, something that has been hard to do on these forums.

Here is a link that might be useful: if you're curious

Thanks Kim - Your blog site is "Blogger," the link is below.

Greg
Southern Nevada

Here is a link that might be useful: Blogger

Thanks for the suggestions and sharing your blogs.

I love reading them in the middle of winter, dreaming of the day when I can get back in the garden!

How is blogging better than emailing yourself?

I am just asking as I know nothing about blogging.

I let Yahoo keep my records and they sort them for me using a keyword I put in the subject line.

Blogging allows you to share your garden experiences with others. Either a select few or everyone that visits your site. It also allows others to comment on your postings if you wish.
Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden Blog

As a first-year vegetable gardener, blogging has been great for me in documenting my gardening efforts, keeping track of my harvests, and connecting with other gardeners. The last part has been really key for me, as: 1)I have lots of newbie questions that other helpful gardener/blog readers answer for me in my comments, and 2)I learn so much from reading other people's garden blogs and interacting with them.

I also experiment a lot, with growing supermarket melon from seed, growing green onions from stubs (after buying and using full-sized green onions from the store), growing various vegetables in our homemade indoor grow box, etc, and it's been fun to document the progress of these experiments and share with others.

I'm not familiar with different blogging platforms, but I use Blogger and I've been pretty happy with it. I use the Label feature to tag my posts with different labels, so that if I want to pull up all my posts on "harvests" for example, I can do that and look at my weekly harvests all in one place. I also have separate labels for different crops and garden-related topics like pests, composting, etc.

Someone mentioned tagging individual pictures. I'm not sure if you can do that in Blogger, but you can do this in Picasa, which is the free software from Google that I use to organize and tag all my pictures.

I use a small section of my blog sidebar to show my To Date harvest, but I keep the real data on a separate spreadsheet. I keep a master spreadsheet with separate worksheets to keep track of my harvests by crop, harvest value (yes, I'm one of those OCD people), harvest yield/ft2 (really super-OCD, I know, I know), planting dates, expected harvest date based on days to maturity, first actual harvest date, etc.

camp10, let me know if you start your own blog sometime! I love reading good gardening blogs and connecting with other gardeners out there.

Here is a link that might be useful: Thyme To Garden Now

I just started one today! And I really like that it has an ap for my phone. So I can blog anything on the spot or wait till later!

Here is a link that might be useful: Regaldozers Blog

I'm terrible at keeping records. My blog doesn't solve that problem, but it helps. For example, I planted my broccoli WAY too late this spring. I don't know exactly how late because I can't find where I wrote down what I sowed when. I do, however, have pictures on my blog of what the plants looked like at the beginning of march, the beginning of April and the beginning of May... those go a LONG way towards guessing when they were planted (and how much earlier I need to plant next year.) You obviously still need to write the info down (on your blog) but my blog's url is a lot harder to lose than the scraps of paper that I normally write info on!

I use blogger... it's free and pretty easy to use.

Here is a link that might be useful: My blog

I recently started blogging and I think it's the way to go. You can search your blogs, create tags for specific items and adding pictures are easy.

I use to keep a notebook as well AND I would print photos but it cost way too much. I love having pictures because pictures really help me see what is going on.

Another benefit for me is I'm nearly always at a computer or I have my cell phone.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Blog

I love my garden blog, even though I'm mostly talking to myself. LOL I'm constantly taking photo updates of my garden, noting when I've planted, what I've learned. I've had friends who want to start gardening ask me for advice and I point them there telling them everything I know is on the blog.

I started it last fall, so I'm quite excited to get to the time of year when I can start comparing photos of this year's garden to last. That will be really fun.

Like the others, I use blogger. It's free and easy.

Here is a link that might be useful: Loribees Garden Blog

My first post here!

I started a blog this year for my family and friends to see, but I don't feel it is a good replacement for record. I make a map of what the garden is doing/looks like on graph paper, I try to do it once a month but it doesn't always work. I always keep a list in the journal of dates things were planted, expected harvest date and actual harvest date. The map helps me rotate crops and the list helps me plan for following years. Since I have only had a garden for 2 years it is still a learning process!

The blog would be a good way to avoid having to make maps since you can just post pictures, but I still like having a journal of plant types and dates.