You may be familiar with in your journal about your own personal experiences. But a Garden Journal?  Yes, you can have a garden journal.  A garden journal is a record of what you have done in your garden.

Keeping a garden journal is an essential part of making note of past, present and future activities for your garden. Remembering everything about each plant and you have been doing in your garden can be a real challenge. The photos you take and the notes that you make, will help you to look back and see what plants grew well and other gardening failures and successes.

If you are a gardener, who grows produce for the market, a garden journal will help to keep you on track and keep your business and garden in order. However, a garden journal is a good thing for any type of gardener.

Here are some great tips on how to make your own garden journal.

Garden Journal Supplies

Here are some items that you might need to make your journal.

Plastic photo sleeves

Get photo sleeves in assorted sizes, so that you can use them for tags, photos, and seed packets.

Three Ring Binder

A binder that has a zip is better to use so that paper will not fall out easily.

Permanent Markers

Use permanent markers that will not fade to mark important notes.

Calendar

This will help you to keep a track on your dates, when you plant, and also when you reaped.

Blank Pages

Use these pages to make additional notes that can be tucked away into a sleeve.

Camera

A camera will come in handy for taking photos of both the good and the bad in your garden.

How To Organize Your Garden Journal

Now that you have all your basic supplies together, the next thing to do is to start making notes.  Use your pen to make notes about when things were planted, when it first bloomed and how long each plant took to reach maturity.  Never throw away your plant tags, and seed packets.  Keep all of these in a sleeve pocket.  Keep pictures of the locations of all your garden beds in a separate sleeve.  By doing this, it will be easy for you to locate your different plants in your garden.  You may use your marker to highlight important notes and dates.

Garden Journal Photos

Your journal would never be complete without adding photos. It’s just like looking through your photo album and seeing all those memories of past years. So always take photos of your garden. Keep following and photographing the growth until harvest time. If it is possible to take pictures in black and white, that would be so much good.  Some things will look much better and clearer in black and white. Keep photos in a plastic photo sleeve, and securely place them in your journal.

Tracking

Make note of important things in your garden journal is very important.  Always take your journal with you whenever you go to visit your garden.  You may need to make quick notes on something that you see.  You will want to track specific things such as:

• Plants that you have an intention of re-planting.
• When you planted different seeds.
• Work that needs to be done in the garden.
• Vegetables that you have planted and will need to be transplanted.
• Problem areas that need to be closely watched.
• Areas that are overgrown and need attention.
• Make notes of spring plants, winter plants, and autumn plants.

Your garden journal will be a  lifetime record. As you get older, whether you have retired from gardening or not, you will surely be going through your journal and enjoy looking back on the memories of years gone by.