I use a spiral bound notebook, with a pen attached with a length of cord. The information is written in my own code/shorthand, along with planting maps of individual beds (garden is a collection of raised beds). The date goes left of the margin. I record any gardening activity I may wish to remember, what is planted where, rainfall, unusual weather trends, and nature observations of interest (e.g., "first Japanese beetles arrive.") I do a "note to self" section each year, which I keep on the last pages of the notebook. Here I record action points that I want to remember next season, e.g., grow more or less of this or that, this variety was terrible and that variety was spectacular, start the eggplants sooner, etc. I find it very helpful to distill these points out from the main narrative pages and record them separately as the season progresses and while I am thinking of them - then I have the "lessons" of that season compiled in a neat list, without having to wade through the main pages searching for them. In my experience my note taking is much more reliable and complete if the notebook is always in a special spot in the garden (once we start growing outside, of course). Currently that means my notebook lives in the glove box of my golf cart, since I always take the golf cart to the garden (being far from the house). In gardens past it has meant leaving it in a special spot in the garden shed, or in one garden with no building, installing a mailbox in the garden to keep the journal in.

Tishtosh -- I like to do the journal by hand, too. I also use spiral ring. Divided into 4 sections, each marked with one of those colorful stickies, which can move as I write my way through the notebook in each section. 1. work log, where I write weather conditions and what I did in the garden, so I know what chores were done when each year (and can get an idea if it was a good time to do them.) If I plant something, I draw an arrow in the margin, so plantings are easy to find, and above the arrow I write what ammendments I used when planting. 2. Notes. This section has random things I don't want to forget--anything from info on varieties to food storage methods, along with warnings, like: don't plant radishes in with mesc mix as you can't tell radish greens from arugula. 3. Harvests. Shows dates and amounts of harvests. At first this helped me know I was making a profit and let me know how much I could spend guilt free on next years inputs. Now (because I'm so far ahead $ wise) it's to let me know when things come on year to year. Or to calculate things like, I just figured out that whether I planted broccoli in early April or in late May, it always took 7 weeks to maturity, so I need to look ahead 7 weeks and make sure I won't be traveling when the broccoli comes on. 4. money spent. This only takes one page, but I like keeping track. I use a new notebook each year, and each one is labeled on the front so I can compare year to year, too. GREAT winter entertainment, and also a great way to learn what works and what doesn't. Enjoy your journaling! Elisa

You might try doing a site search for "gardening software" - there are about 700 posts in different forums. There is one in the Landscape design forum dealing with Mac OS 10 software.

I just use notepad which is on all Windows machines. The easiest way to open notepad on Windows is to go to your Start menu, then select "run", then make sure field is totally blank and type in "notepad" and it will bring up a blank file. You can save this to any directory on your computer. You probably will want a shortcut on your desktop so it is easy to find next time. I have a text file currently that is titled jour010105.txt. I started it on January 1 of this year. I enter ".LOG" on the first line at the top of the file. This causes a time stamp to be entered every time I open the file. I enter plain simple ordinary text. I have some "keywords" I use that help searching later. For example: TODO: precedes every list of items I need to do. The good thing is I can enter these as I think of them. Then I can search back for any old ones to make sure I've done. There are many many other tricks, too numerous to enter here. Eventually, on a file, you will get a message from notepad telling you "out of memory". This is because there is a limit on the size of the journal file. When this happens, I just start a new one using the date. I start in the same directory as all my other journal text files. They go back many years. I put phone calls I need to make. People I talk to , random thoughts, whatever. It is very free form but because I can search for anything it works. I do need to kind of think sometimes when I make an entry to use language that will make it easy to search for later if that is what I think I will need to do. The really good thing about this system is that it can be used and read on any operating system whether Windows, Macintosh, Linux or IBM or even those little palm pilots. Plain ascii text is a universal language. Always has been and I would bet that it always will be. I would be lost without my electronic journal. I make a shortcut so all I have to do is click once. The only hard part is when one journal file fills and you need to transition to a new journal file but not really very hard. I highly recommend "plain text". Besides being universal, the file opens very quickly with "notepad.exe" on my Windows system. Not like Microsoft Word files which take much longer. On other systems, there will be some other text reader. Worst case is that you may need to find out the name of the text reader and define it when you transfer your journal file to the new system. I think the hardest part of this system is that you have to be comfortable with the file structure on your computer whether Dos or Windows XP or Linux. Because you will probably be copying these journal files at some point, possibly even renameing them, etc. I don't think I'm assuming too much computer knowledge. I just love having it so simple. I use notepad files for lots of other things besides my journal, such as my big shopping list I check for shopping for groceries, my list of videos to choose from when we want to rent something, list of possible menus I use when I trying to plan dinner, on and on. --Alice