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Keeping a garden journal

A gardener with a notebook beats a gardener with ten years of memory — because gardens change every year, and memory is lossy. Your year-two harvest will be 3× better than year one for exactly one reason: the notes you took in year one. This page is about what to write down, how often, and in what form — so you actually do it.

Why keep a journal?

  • Year-over-year learning: last spring's 'too-late sowing' becomes this spring's perfect timing — only if you wrote it down.
  • Know what your family really eats. The 8 kg of zucchini your kids ignored is useful data for next year's wishlist.
  • Spot patterns only a journal can reveal: every third year the peas fail — is that the weather, the soil, the rotation?
  • Variety memory: after 3 seasons you've grown 12 tomato varieties. Without notes, you can't remember which one was the best tasting.

    • What to record

    Don't over-engineer it. The seven fields below capture 95% of the value — most of them take 15 seconds per entry.

  • Sow date + variety + seed source — one line per sowing. 'Apr 12 – Sungold cherry tomato – Bingenheimer'.
  • Transplant date — when the seedling went into the bed. Helps you calculate your actual grow time next year.
  • First harvest date + final harvest date — the window, not just the peak.
  • Harvest weight or count — a kitchen scale and a sticky note on the fridge work fine. Patterns emerge after 2–3 years.
  • Weather highlights — last frost, first frost, heatwaves, unusual storms. Frost dates alone explain most year-to-year variation.
  • Pest and disease events — 'aphids on kale week of Jun 15; ladybirds arrived week later'. Next year you watch that week.
  • Family feedback — a one-word rating at the end of the season. 'Kohlrabi — meh.' saves you a square next year.

    • Four formats — pick one, not all four

    The best format is the one you actually use. Match it to how you already work.

    Paper notebook

    A6 or A5, one double-page per month. Waterproof cover ideal (garden-shed weather). Pro: zero friction, survives power outages. Con: not searchable, can't add photos easily. Best for people who already use paper for shopping lists.

    Spreadsheet (Google Sheets / Excel)

    One row per sowing, columns for variety / date / transplant / first harvest / weight / rating. Pro: sortable, multi-year comparisons trivial, shareable. Con: discipline needed. Best if you already keep other household spreadsheets.

    PlotMate (or a garden app)

    PlotMate already knows your bed layout, plants, sowing calendar — use the built-in harvest diary and photo diary to log directly against the squares. Pro: contextual, data sits with the plant. Con: tied to one app.

    Photo-only journal

    Take one photo per bed, same angle, on the 1st of every month. That's it. Not as detailed, but a 24-photo timelapse over two years teaches you more than most text notes. Combine with one of the above for best effect.

    A realistic rhythm

    Three touchpoints per week / month / year — that's the whole system.

    Weekly (2 minutes)

    During your 10-minute Saturday garden walk: note any sowings, transplants, first harvests, pest sightings. Just the event + date. No essays.

    Monthly (10 minutes)

    First of the month: flip back through the weekly entries, add a one-paragraph summary. 'July: hot and dry. Tomatoes peaked week 3. Aphids on kale, ignored them, ladybirds sorted it.'

    End of season (1 hour)

    November, hot tea, kitchen table. Go through the year answering the five review questions below. Result: next year's shortlist.

    Five year-end questions

    Answer these honestly, in one or two sentences each. This is the highest-value hour of the whole gardening year.

  • What exceeded expectations? (Keep doing this.)
  • What failed or disappointed? (Why — variety, timing, place, weather, pest?)
  • What would I repeat identically next year? (Your new default list.)
  • What would I drop? (Freed up squares for new experiments.)
  • What new thing do I want to try once? (Pick 1–2, not 10. Most experiments should stay experiments.)

    • Common journal mistakes

  • Only writing when things go wrong. The log of what *worked* is more valuable — it's your repeat-book.
  • Over-detailed the first week, nothing after week three. Pick a tiny rhythm and keep it, every week forever.
  • No end-of-year review. Without it, the notes are just data with no insights — reread them in November.
  • Starting a new book every year. Keep one multi-year book so you can actually compare — the year-over-year view is where the learning is.

    • The journal is the single highest-ROI habit in the whole garden. 2 minutes per week for 30 weeks = one hour per year, and it makes every subsequent year measurably better. Start this Saturday with a blank page and today's date.