I think either my mom or one of her friends uses garden software. I'll have to ask her.

I use a really embarrassing Excel spreadsheet with tacky diagrams and lots of notes. (eg. "Party Diamond has botrytis this year" and "Arena sucks this year and probably will not bloom") I save a new version every year and add and subtract as necessary.

Don't knock the excel. I like my spreadsheet better than alot of the gardening software out there. I really started about 5 years ago. I use it mostly for all the seeds I start but at the end there are new additions of trees and plants.

I find it easy cause I just copy the previous years list of seeds and then add the additions. I have all the varieties ( and there is hundreds of them) DTM, start dates, seed company names, year of purchase, characteristics, comments, and any other info.

I have found the the software out there has very limited varieties ect and some are hard to edit.

Just my 2 cents, but this has been working great for me. C

I've never used Excel but might be willing to learn.

Will it search a plant for you or do you have to read through everything to find what you want?

Yup you can search in Excel. Formatting takes some practice though. I would recommend getting a book from the library that would walk you through the basics.

Another thing I've been doing is taking high resolution photos of the gardens at different times of the year, and adding text to the photos labeling what is growing where.

Northspruce I love the idea of the pictures.

I hope this isn't a really dumb question, but do you put them on your spreadsheet, or do you do it separately??

Hmmmm. I'm sure DH knows how to use Excel...........

I don't put the photos on the spreadsheet, I have a photo editing program similar to Photoshop (Jasc Paint Shop Pro) that opens the picture for editing and I can add text.

And she photoshops out all the weeds! LOL

SSSSSSHHHHHHH Marcia!! LOL

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?