Gardening Guides
10 Reasons to Start Keeping a Garden Journal
Get more enjoyment and value from your garden by noting your plantings, yields, wildlife visits and inspirations
A garden journal can be filled with beautiful sketches and neat garden plans — or a messy jumble of notes, lists and pasted-in photos. But what it looks like doesn’t matter nearly as much as the value it contains within its well-worn covers. This little diary of your gardening life can help you keep track of what you planted where, which veggie varieties taste the best, which birds and butterflies visit and which neighbor you lent that pruning saw to last year. And it’s not just for homeowners with large lots; a garden journal can enrich your gardening life, whether you have a few pots of tomatoes on the fire escape or a plot in the community garden down the road.
1. Rate your favorite crops. One of my family’s favorite garden activities is the taste test. It’s fun to choose a few new competing varieties of our favorite veggies each year and hold a tasting to see which is crowned the new favorite. Keeping the results of your tastings in your garden journal year after year will provide a record of the hits (and misses) of your own garden-to-table experiment.
2. Keep track of what you plant where. It may seem simple enough when you’re sowing seeds or setting out seedlings in your garden, but it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of what went where, even in a small garden. And if you’re hoping to compare results from several different varieties of vegetables, you’ll want to be able to say for certain which is which. A basic (but accurately labeled) drawing of your garden will help avoid confusion.
Prefer not to draw? Snap a clear photo of each planting bed in your garden, then print and label the photo with names of plants. (This is easiest to do if you print on plain copy paper rather than photo paper.) Tape the photo into your garden journal and you can use it as a reference when you need to remember which patch was planted with Green Arrow peas and which with Lincoln peas.
Seeds or Seedlings? How to Get Your Garden Started
Prefer not to draw? Snap a clear photo of each planting bed in your garden, then print and label the photo with names of plants. (This is easiest to do if you print on plain copy paper rather than photo paper.) Tape the photo into your garden journal and you can use it as a reference when you need to remember which patch was planted with Green Arrow peas and which with Lincoln peas.
Seeds or Seedlings? How to Get Your Garden Started
3. Note harvest dates and yields. Use your garden journal to jot down notes from those seed packets about expected harvest dates. And then, when harvest time comes around, make note of how much you were able to harvest. These sorts of notes are invaluable when it comes time to plan for next year’s garden — if your family ate up all the Tuscan kale in a week but couldn’t look at another zucchini by the end of the season, you’ll know some adjustments are needed.
4. Track spending. With so many luscious plants, shiny tools and useful supplies to pick from, a trip to the nursery (or an online trip to the seed catalog company) can end up being a costly endeavor. Spend smart by keeping track of what you need for the garden, what would be nice to have and what your budget allows, all within the pages of your trusty garden journal. It can’t stop you from falling for that bright red wheelbarrow or flat of fragrant basil, but it will at least keep you mindful of the bottom line.
5. Get little ones involved. Encourage young children to get involved by drawing pictures of their favorite plants, flowers and bugs in the family garden journal. Budding photographers can snap photos of the garden as it progresses through the seasons and tape the photos in. And older kids can engage math and writing skills to measure plant growth, record observations or calculate profits from a homegrown lemonade stand.
How to Cultivate a Young Gardener
How to Cultivate a Young Gardener
6. Track tool maintenance and lending. Keeping your garden tools clean, sharp and well-oiled will prolong their life and make them easier and more pleasurable to use. When you clean or sharpen your tools, make note of the date in your garden journal so you won’t have to wonder how long it’s been next time.
And if your neighbor needs to borrow that spade or pruning saw? A quick note in your garden journal will ensure you don’t forget who you lent it to.
Houzz TV: 5 Tools Every Gardener Should Own | Find gardening tools
And if your neighbor needs to borrow that spade or pruning saw? A quick note in your garden journal will ensure you don’t forget who you lent it to.
Houzz TV: 5 Tools Every Gardener Should Own | Find gardening tools
7. Create a journal for your balcony garden or community garden plot. Just because you don’t have a vast suburban or country garden doesn’t mean you must miss out on the pleasures of digging your hands in the earth. Whether you’re cultivating a container garden on your balcony or patio, or growing veggies in a plot at your local community garden, your patch of green deserves a garden journal too. Many of the same ideas included here will apply, just on a smaller scale.
10 Easy Edibles to Grow in Containers
10 Easy Edibles to Grow in Containers
8. Make note of wildlife that visits your garden. Observing birds, butterflies and other wildlife is one of the great pleasures of being in a garden. Devote a section of your garden journal to noting these occurrences. If you’re feeling artistic, add a colored pencil sketch — and if you’re quick enough with the camera, by all means tape in a photo too!
Make Your Garden a Haven for Backyard Birds | Browse bird feeders
Make Your Garden a Haven for Backyard Birds | Browse bird feeders
9. Journal about your other garden-related activities too. Do you have beehives or backyard chickens, or do you love to preserve your own homegrown jam in the summer? Record your progress, questions, to-dos and tales of your adventures and experiments in your garden journal.
Is a Backyard Chicken Coop Right for You?
Is a Backyard Chicken Coop Right for You?
10. Dream, plan and grow. A garden evolves, and with it, your garden journal will too. Use it to record your dreams, landscaping ideas and plans for the future. And in the middle of winter, when not a thing is growing in your garden patch, you can always flip through the pages of your garden journal and be reminded of the promise of green still to come.
Tell us: Do you keep a garden journal? If so, how do you use it? Share a photo in the Comments!
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Tell us: Do you keep a garden journal? If so, how do you use it? Share a photo in the Comments!
More
Reflections From a Year in the Native Garden
Browse more garden guides