12 Things to Include in Your Garden Journal

Gardening has crossed over from a mere hobby into a full blown passion. 

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself scouring the shelves at the library for any related book I could find. I had notepads everywhere around the house with notes on square foot gardening, back to eden gardening, and sketches of what I wanted to do with my garden in the years to come. 

At this point, I really needed to consolidate all of this information I had accumulated, and have a designated area to create and design. 

Enter: garden journal. 

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You can use anything from a 3-ring binder to the best journal that money can buy. I chose to get a dotted journal. I liked the dotted feature instead of the lined ones because I wanted to be able to sketch out my designs easily and to scale. Think graph paper but without the lines. 

My garden journal has turned into a goldmine of resources for me, and I wanted to share with you how I went about setting it up. 

So if you’re just sitting down with a brand new journal, or you are wanting to revamp your old trusty one a bit, read on to see what I include in mine. 

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Weather Patterns

This has been great to look back on, living in an area that gets really crazy weather patterns. Patterns is a stretch of a word here. One day we had 80°F weather, then the next we had a blizzard that shut down the highway. 

This year, I was able to look back at my notes to see that the most destructive summer hail storms happened beginning early June. I was able to prepare this year and have my protection ready. 

What Performed Well

This one’s a given I think. In January, I’m flipping through seed catalogues, daydreaming about all the different things I could squeeze into my garden. Looking at this note section in my garden journal allows me to see that, yes, with our short growing season, cherry tomatoes did exceptionally well. So go ahead and order more! But it also brings me back down to earth because in my garden journal, I also make a list of….

What Did NOT Do Well

This is equally important. I don’t want to waste time, money and resources on growing something that just simply isn’t suitable for my climate. Example given, I’m not going to order a lemon tree and expect it to thrive in my garden over winter. But by all means, keep pushing the boundaries of your growing zone! But keep good notes while doing so. 

Pests I Saw and How I Treated Them

Sometimes I’ll even doodle a little picture of the pest with a description of where I found it, what it looked like, and what I did to treat it. This summer, I found my first harlequin bug on a bean plant. I thought it was some kind of beautiful ladybug type insect, but now my garden notes direct me to removing said bug in the future. 

Amendments Used and Results

For me, this typically includes the date of application as well. My go-to amendments are compost, fish emulsion, blood meal and bone meal. 

Sun Patterns

Tracking the sun on your garden throughout the year is mighty important in the planning and planting stages. During the summer, my raised beds in my backyard get full sun for the entire day. It’s great! But once the sun gets a little lower in the sky, only one of them gets enough sunlight to attempt a fall and winter garden. Funny how that works. 

Seed Inventory

I have so many pages dedicated to this, that it’s kind of insane, to be honest. My husband saw it and made me an excel spreadsheet to lessen the load (sweeeet!). But having this in your journal is a great way to be able to see what you have before placing any seed orders. I also take this moment to note when I got the seeds, to make sure I’m using up the older ones first. 

Sketch of Garden Area

Let your creativity shine in this section. I have pages of sketches of my garden areas that keep changing with each season (hello, crop rotation), but in the front of my journal I have a basic outline of the area, without any crops added in. This way I don’t have to remeasure to scale every time I want to plan a bed out. 

Monthly To Do Lists

In my journal, I have a half page dedicated to each month. Any time I do a gardening related task, I jot it down in that month. Pretty soon, I accumulated a nice little month-by-month list of what I can expect to be doing for the garden that month.

Click here to read about what gardening tasks you can do in January!

Seed Starting Dates

Among the monthly lists, I’ve also drawn up a simple calendar. Based on the information that came with your seeds, use this space to jot down when you should start your seeds. 

List of Books and Resources

My library system is awesome. I don’t know how many dozens of books I’ve checked out about gardening, homesteading, preserving, e.t.c. 

Oh wait, yes I do. Because I’ve dedicated a page to list any good books or websites I’ve come across on this journey. 

Preservation Notes

Along with a list of resources, I’ve jotted down a few notes about my experiences preserving what we’ve grown. For example, basil and green onions take a very long time to dehydrate in my very old dehydrator. So next year when it seems to be taking forever, I can look at my notes and not fret.

Do you you keep a garden journal? What other things would you add to this list? I’d love to hear from you, so leave me a comment below and let me know how you garden. 

Until next time, 

Becca