Garden Journaling for a Productive Season

Filled with notes, covered in dirt, and pressed with flowers—a journal is part of the creative process of gardening itself!

 

Gardening is not just a one-time event; it’s something you do throughout the seasons, and again every year. Planning is essential to your success, as is documenting your wins and mistakes so you can improve the next year. A gardening journal is a tool to help with both of these tasks, and much more—here’s what to include, and how to use it!

 

What Kind of Journal to Use 

You can buy a garden journal specifically designed for the purpose. They often include helpful sections such as calendars, pages for taking notes, and folders for keeping seed packages. It’s nice to work with a pre-designed garden journal, but you can just as easily make your own. In fact, it can be a fun project to create one and personalize it with your own style!

 

What Is Included in a Garden Journal?

 

Calendar 

A calendar helps you plan out your planting times, prospective harvest times, and any other key events throughout the season. It also comes in handy when you need to decide how far in advance to start seedlings in the spring. Basically, anything you plan in advance you can record in the calendar, so you’re ready when the time comes. 

 

Garden Diagram 

A garden diagram is a sketch of where you’ve planted plants in your garden. This chart helps you discover the best location for certain plants, and plan crop rotations in future seasons. A garden diagram also helps uncover beneficial plant relationships, and new spaces to plant! 

 

Maintenance Schedule 

A maintenance schedule helps you stay on top of watering, weeding, harvesting, and managing pests. It also becomes a touchstone for future seasons—helping you find ways to become more efficient and reduce your maintenance time. 

 

List of Seed and Plant Information 

With so many varieties of seeds out there, it’s helpful to keep a list of what seeds you used, which ones worked, and which ones could have been better. You can also install a pocket or folder inside your garden journal to keep the empty seed packages for future reference. 

 

Daily Log 

Probably the most essential part of a garden journal is just a section of blank pages where you can record noteworthy events throughout the growing season. Here you can include anything, such as the last day of frost, when you transplanted your tomatoes, when mice ate your turnips, or how many harvests of salad greens you got. This information allows you to solve problems, improve on successes, avoid last year’s mistakes, and anticipate seasonal events.

 

Don’t forget to record the date of each entry, and don’t be afraid to include information that may not seem relevant at the time. You never know what details will prove useful in solving future gardening problems. 

 

Expenses 

Although gardening is a very cheap way to produce high-quality food, it’s still worthwhile to record your expenses. It will give you a big picture of how much money you’re saving on groceries, or spending on seeds, soil amendments, tools, and other costs.

 

Insights and Inspiration 

Gardening is a living process for both you, your family, and your plants. You can’t truly capture it with lists of information, diagrams, and schedules alone. You need room to record insights, tell stories, and document your joy and gratitude along the way. It’s possible to mix these entries into your daily log, or you can create another section specifically for this. Feel free to include pressed flowers, photos, or other touchstones, so you not only remember the information, but the memories as well.

 

A garden journal is not only a tool to help you improve gardening; it’s also a journal for recording memories. At the beginning of the season, it helps you plan. At the end of the season, it helps you remember the plants you grew, the flowers you enjoyed, and the food you feasted on. Filled with notes, covered in dirt, and pressed with flowers—a journal is part of the creative process of gardening itself!

 

For all your gardening supplies and more tips on garden planning, feel free to visit our garden center in Glenside, PA—we’re always happy to help!