Benefits of Keeping a Garden Journal

Are you keeping your garden journal up-to-date?

A garden journal is a written document kept update through the growing season to record and keep track of important garden information that you want to remember and possibly reuse in the future.  It is also an excellent way to enjoy the garden year round, and to bring to quick recall favorite garden experiences.  Many find garden journals great leisure reading.  Perhaps the greatest benefit is that they can help us correctly manage and care for our gardens and landscapes.

A garden journal can take many forms.  It can be simply a brief listing of specific plants and their performance during the growing season, or it can be an in depth history of the lives of people enjoying the simple pleasures of gardening.  Filled with photos and drawings, and notes of feelings and insights, a journal can be a book of fond memories just as much as it is a record of life emerging from the soil.  

A journal takes on the personality of the author and its benefits are as numerous and as varied as the reasons that it is kept.  If you think a garden journal is for you, here are a few ideas to get you started.

First, think of your garden journal as a tool, a very important tool to help you maintain a productive garden.  If you are an avid gardener, you may have so many plants that it becomes easy to forget when you last fertilized your rose or watered your citrus tree.  A journal will help you remember what task you performed for each plant, and when.  Many dead or dying trees and shrubs would probably be alive and well today if we could have just remembered when we last gave them water.

The content of the garden journal should include the important basic information of planting dates and the dates the plants emerged from the soil.  The time between planting and germination is always a difficult time for young plants and is affected by temperature, rainfall and light intensity.  Each year many of us try to get an earlier start in our gardens to avoid the problems of heat and insects later on.  By recording planting and germination dates we can keep track of how well our plants do in the early season.  That information will tell us whether we can squeeze the calendar a little more, or whether we should wait for warmer temperatures. 

The same goes for harvest.  We should record not only how well the plants do during the growing season, but we should also note the quality and quantity of the harvest at the end of the season.  This information, recorded in the journal, will be available for you to ponder the next time you select a planting date.

If you are into flowers, blooming periods are important information to collect.  Many are trying to ensure a colorful garden for a party or family gathering.  Information related to peak blooming times, tied to the planting calendar, will help you remember year to year what worked best.

Many of us like to experiment with different varieties.  As we get older, our “forgetters” seem to get better.  Soon, if we do not write it down, we can’t remember the varieties we have tried in the past.  Then, we either begin to duplicate ourselves, or we forget how well a particular variety performed in the garden.  A journal will help capture this important information.

Do not forget to record the costs of plants and supplies.  How better way to build a good budget for that next garden than by keeping track of the actual costs of keeping the garden productive and healthy? 

In the interest of good plant health, it is important to remember what plants went into which part of the garden in a given season.  Crop rotation has been an important cultural tool since the early years of agriculture.  Because rotation helps prevent the build up of disease pathogens and insects, recording plant locations each year will help us decide where specific plants should be placed in the garden. 

Into the journal should also go details of all garden tasks that you do.  When you perform a specific operation like feeding, watering, spraying and pruning, write it down for future reference. 

Styles of record-keeping can range from nearly clinical listings of plant names and bloom dates to sentimental narratives chronicling both facts and feelings.  The contents of garden notebooks and journals could vary from harvest recipes to weather data and from equipment warranties to vegetable taste-test results. 

A three-ring binder with a washable cover and an inside pocket to hold pens and pencils is a great choice for recording garden information.  The ring binder gives flexibility to add pages as needed and to slip in clippings and other useful information.

Some people divide the notebooks by month using plastic-covered index tabs on dividers.  Behind each divider they place a page from a store-bought calendar.  You can either fill in the daily calendar squares with ‘to do’ lists gleaned from magazines and Cooperative Extension garden columns, or you can keep track of the day’s achievements, such as when a particular garden bed or tree was watered.

While this much information may be sufficient for some, others may want to follow the calendar leaves with lined paper for making detailed notes on garden activities, and impressions, such as successful plant combinations, weather patterns, including their effect on the plants, and reminders to move plants or allow more time for certain garden tasks. 

Another useful addition to the notebook is a reference section organized alphabetically to keep track of books and tools.  In clear plastic inserts, you may want to slip seed packets, plant tags, articles, and instructions.

You may decide that you want to design your own data forms.  You might, for example, assemble a form that records a plant’s common and botanical names, characteristics and use, size, bloom season, cultural requirements and pests and diseases.  It all depends upon your needs and interests.

As you personalize your journal, you may want to write in it daily or you may decide to write only when important information presents itself.  For example, you may decide to walk through your garden on the last day of the month and make notes that will be important to you.

When it comes time to begin a new year, simply add extra pages to the monthly sections.  If you are more ambitious, you can file each month’s entries in a separate notebook or in a file cabinet file labeled by month.

Keeping a good garden journal through the months and the years will, at the very least, help you make sound decisions in the garden.  If you have kept track of family events, such as garden parties, a wedding, new garden renovations and new pets, you will have at your fingertips a set of memories that will last a lifetime.

If you have questions, you can reach one of the Master Gardeners at the Cooperative Extension office, 820 E. Cottonwood Lane, Building C, in Casa Grande.  The telephone is (520) 836-5221, 204.  The author’s email address is gibsonrd@ag.arizona.edu.

The University of Arizona is an equal opportunity, affirmative action institution.  The University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or sexual orientation in its programs and activities.

Rick Gibson
Extension Agent, Agriculture
University of Arizona Cooperative Extension
820 E. Cottonwood Lane, Building C
Casa Grande, Arizona 85122
Voice:    (520) 836-5221
Fax:    (520) 836-1750
email:    gibsonrd@ag.arizona.edu