How to Keep a Garden Planting Journal

Have you ever noticed that your plant tags seem to find a way of getting lost? Of course, it is only when you can’t remember just exactly what that variety you planted was.

Being a plant lover myself, I grow all sorts of herbs, vegetables, annual flowers and perennials and sometimes can’t remember just what I did put where.

We have even purchased the metal tags but they still get broken or lost. I had a basic garden planner, but I needed an ongoing system.

A few years ago I decided to give a try to a new system. I started a plant journal. I have a notebook where I record my plantings of both perennial and annual plants.

I usually put in somewhere around 60 heirloom tomato plants. When I plant them I take my garden log book out with me and after I have planted the number of plants of a variety that I want. I put those on the page in the row that corresponds and then move on to the next variety, recording them as I plant.

Last year when we had our tomato taste trial, it was so easy. We didn’t have to search for the tags and we knew exactly which tomato we were testing.

I know you can find fancy garden planners, but I simply use a spiral notebook with grid paper and have it sectioned for the various gardens.

Several Seasons of Your Garden Planting Journal

It is helpful also to be able to look back and see what I planted in previous years as well as letting me keep track of my rotation of plants in the vegetable and herb gardens.

I like to use a rotation schedule of three years. So where I put my tomato plants this year will not see them again until the fourth year.

I know this seems very simple and it is…some of the best things in life are.