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 have all the orchids together assigned a number. The number gets an * in front if it is gone for any reason and I don't reuse the number. I have a column for a species/hybrid indicator. The genus, the species, the whole tag contents, flower picture ID, plant picture ID, OrchidSpecies.com page ID, a collection/excess/for-sale indicator and what it is potted in. All that is sliced and diced and sorted with notes, which are separate files, depending on if the relate to the species or the specific plant. Printed lists are: one line per species (I take to buying opportunities so I don't get more), plants that need a flower picture, plants that need a plant picture. And of course the web plant list and individual plant web pages. I am still filling in the pictures. I had a lot of plants before I did the inventory, but every new plant now gets a picture. The flower pictures are only of that plant, not somebody elses plant, so I have to wait for a bloom for that.

That's an interesting link, Galina. I've used the USDA's descriptors & SSE's guidelines to design my own descriptor form, plus a couple worksheets that I use to collect data for the year in progress. The USDA's system is very complex... and doesn't come with a "user's guide" such as the one in your link. Or at least, I haven't found it yet. I've never described this, since the 2-sided form is rather lengthy... wish I could just post it. The form often has more than one item per line, sometimes with selections which can be circled. There are also plenty of blank lines to record observations. The basic outline follows: Front page: Cultivar/Source Data - Common name & variety (I use SSE's guidelines, such as "Bean/pole/dry Calypso") - SSE number + other accession number (such as USDA or Gatersleben) - Family + species - Possible alias or similar - Source/year + year grown Culture - Date/days: Sow / Germination / Flower / Seed - Transplant? (select plastic cell, peat pot, rooted cutting, hotbed, other) - Spacing: plant / row - Culture: (select climbing, caged, trailing, row, pot, greenhouse)(could add raised bed to this) - Spacing/culture correct? (yes/no)(if "no", remarks on line below) - Blanks for mulch / irrigation / isolation method - Organic? (yes/no) + blanks for fertilizer / chemical applications - Lines for Culture remarks Plant Description + Photographs? (yes/no) - Blanks for height / spread / growth habit - Sections of lines for describing: Root: Stem: Leaf: Flower: Fruit: Seed: Reactions to environmental stress: Disease observations: Insect/animal observation: Back page: Harvest Evaluation - Date/days for vegetable maturity (green + ripe, or shell for legumes) - Total plants (or row feet) + Quantity + Weight - Vegetable yield per plant/row foot + Quantity + Weight - Seed Yield (total weight) + Weight per 100 seeds (grams) - Seeds per ounce + avg. weight per plant + avg. seeds/plant - Lines for harvest remarks Culinary Qualities (This is where I enter flavor, texture, ease of preparation, etc. Methods of preparation & specific use tested are mentioned, such as salad, boiled, grilled, sauce, chili, soup, etc.) - Sections of lines for describing: Raw: Fresh cooked: Dry (either seed, or dehydrated): Shell quality (legumes only): Frozen: Canned/pickled: General Comments: Lines for anything which was not covered, or needs further explanation. At the very least, I always include: - Any other varieties of the same species grown nearby & distances. This will help to identify the parentage any crosses which might appear in following years. - A summary of the weather for the growing season, and its effects. - Any other factors which might have influenced plant growth or seed purity, such as shade, soil variations, late planting, or damage to isolation methods. This is the main descriptor page; there are addendum pages (much simpler) that can be used to record the differences in performance in successive years. There is also a worksheet that I use to list all varieties, their planned location, whether transplants are needed, and to record all date information: plant/germ/flower (flower color is recorded also)/harvest (green)/harvest (ripe)/harvest (dry). I generally use one of these worksheets for each of the main families (Leguminosae, Solanaceae, Cucurbitaceae) plus miscellaneous. Dean, you'll be getting a package from me shortly, with the seed we discussed previously. I'll enclose a copy of the descriptor sheet that I use, plus the worksheet I use to record dates.

I'll admit straight off that I've only looked at the drawings and haven't read any feedback. I know you have been working on this for a while and I have seen numerous layouts over the last couple of years and they are always changing. I don't fault you for that as I spent a year looking at online plans before deciding to draw my own plans for our future dream home. I re-visit mine every few months, as we are waiting for the market to recover more in our area before moving forward. I tweak a little here and there but the basis layout of the house has never changed. I don't mean this as a negative dig but it seems that you are not quite sure what you want or where you want it. I did my initial drawings using Microsoft excel. Open a spreadsheet. Click the little box in the upper left hand corner to highlight the entire sheet and change both your rows and columns to the same pixel size. This will give you a true graph paper to work with and then everything you do will then be to scale. Use the border function to draw boxes, copy and paste if you don't like the flow and before you know it you'll have a functional floor plan. As I don't know your room sizes this is a rough beginning. I changed a few things. Swapped the sink and range, added a prep sink to the island and swapped the bath with the outside entry as I would not like a view of the toilet from the front door.