I have to admit that I have not completed my perfect garden notebook. Even in its limited use I see the advantages to keeping some type of journal of planting activity outside my house for my yard and garden. Today’s blog has two objectives. One to document what I really want to accomplish in a full fledge garden note book and second to share my brainstorming session with fellow gardeners. I find such a notebook useful in that it helps me remember all the details from year to year that I would otherwise forget. I advise an electronic copy and a hard copy as a backup in case one or the other gets lost.

My garden book will someday contain all the following:

Plant logs

–        Illustrations of plants to learn their appearance so I can tell what is a plant or weed

–        Log of what bed contained what item when; so I can put it elsewhere in the next planting.

–        Record when things start to sprout and are ripe.

–        Different traits of different kinds of the same vegetables or for fruits, the tomato.

–        Length of time of harvest

–        Planting techniques – distance of seeds to ensuring flat ground for watering

–        Ways to repel certain insects

Related gardening tasks

–        Brands of garden soil or compost and what is good or not good.

–        Contacts for seeds or sand or other useful garden items

–        Coupons, articles that might come in seed magazines or gardening stores.

–        What items make good anti weed repellents i.e.: newspaper verses mesh

–        My observations of how useful different types of gardening tools are.

–        Breeding notes if you’re trying to create a new type of flower.

–        Record of where different things are stored for later access.

Experiences:

–        Things I’ve learned from others

–        Things I’ve learned from experience

–        Successful compost techniques

–        Handouts from classes and gardening items off the internet

–        Rigging and terraces for vertical growing plants

Other web sites that provide some great info:

http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2010/12/garden-planner-for-notebooks.html

http://www.stonepylon.com/garden/gdnntbk.htm

http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetables/Vegetables_Gardening_Profiles_Growing_Tips_and_Ideas.htm