RE: garden diary software?

Joe is right about everyone's needs being different. I have several systems.

I found I was sometimes buying duplicate plants, particularly in frenzied buying situations like club sales, so I have an alphabetized book that fits in my purse. If I read about a plant I'd like, I write it in the book in pencil, and when I buy it, I go over the notation in ink. I then found that wasn't enough information, so now I note where I read about the plant, so I can go back for more information, and where and when I bought it, and a note about where I planted it.

I keep a book of garden maps, and I have started noting the date of planting on them too. I also keep old maps, even when I think the plants are all dead. Sometimes seedlings come up, and a couple of times long-dead plants have resurrected themselves, like the arisaema that came up for the first time after being underground twelve years.

I keep a database of seeds: date of sowing, source, number of seeds if the number is small, treatment given (soaking, dark, temperature etc), date germinated. All these get filled in. Later notes about transplanting and date of first flowering are not so often filled in, but some information is (usually) in the map book.

There was a time when we planned to go off sailing for a couple of years (didn't happen) and I figured I had better keep track of when I did everything so I could hand the book over to a hired gardener while we were gone. The book I use is a Gardener's Diary published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has three pages for each month: early, mid and late. I write the following: Maintenance, Noticeably in bloom, Seeds ripe, Ready to eat. It really helps when someone emails me from overseas to ask when would be a good time to visit to see wildflowers. It also helps in my original aim, though my trips are much shorter than the original one I planned. I know that I'd better tie some bags on my hellebore seedpods if I'm going to be gone in May, and the earliest I'll have ripe figs is mid June.

I also have a very large diary, bought at a stationers, produced by the same company that makes various ledgers. There is one huge page for each day, and I write in it when the mood strikes. I've been doing this for about 15 years and haven't nearly filled it up yet. Every once in a while I reread it.

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Diane Whitehead Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8
cool mediterranean climate (dry summer, rainy winter - 68 cm annually)
sandy soil

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