Garden Journal

I've been meaning to make one of these for years, but never seemed to get around to it. I know what I wanted in my journal, but wanted sheets already made. Some day I will figure out how to make my own printables.

A quick search through Google gave me a ton of links. I chose the pages from Terroir Seeds. They had pretty much everything I wanted as a free PDF file. You can also buy it as a bound printed book for a reasonable price. I didn't use all the pages in the book, but I did print most of them.

Here is a list of what I have in my journal and where to find them:

First thing is a planting calendar that you can find at Sprout Robot. Of course when I used this in February to plan my garden, it was all free. Now they have a limited free plan and two other pay plans. I checked out the limited free plan, and it is fine for me. All you do is put in your zip code and it pulls up a list of what you should plant and when. This year we had snow until around the end of March (some areas got snow into May!), so I had to change a few things and had to warm the beds up a little.

The next thing is some guidelines for seed germination that you can get at Terroir Seeds. It has a nice little temperature chart for seed germination.

Then I have a nice companion planting chart. I have never tried this, so doing this is kind of an experiment. When I mentioned to my dad that I was doing companion planting, he said that he hasn't herd anyone mention it in over 20 years. But he also said it works. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to plants and gardening. He has been doing it since he was a teen and studied it in school.

My garden planning page is next. I have it right next to my companion chart to make things easier. This picture was done before I changed my plans. it is now two pages long so that I can fit the rest of the bed at the bottom of this page and the three new beds that we built this past week.

Up next is lists for transplants and planting directly in the ground. I can keep track of when I planted the seed or plant, when harvested as well as other things.

Then there are several pages for me to jot down the daily weather observations.

Next there is a page to keep track of any pests and disease that might attack your garden. I have seen both in the past (tomato horn worms are pretty cool looking).

The rest of the journal has lined pages for each veggie and herb planted. Here I will be able to make more notes and include pictures of the plants and info from the seed packets.

I am hoping to continue the journal for many years to help me with my garden and to improve my harvests.