Re: How do you keep track of your plants?
Hi everyone,
I too would be interested in what you're doing with Access and particularly
how it helps you.
Myself, I use a derivative of the Tom Clothier database as an Excel
spreadsheet. I have these fields mostly
from Tom's original:
Year started
Botanical Name
Common Name
Variety/Color
Type of plant (orn, vege, herb, vine, tree, shrub, grass)
Seed Stock (in or out)
Year/source (used primarily in trading seeds)
Quantity (used primarily in trading seeds)
Method # (sowing method from a list)
Sowing method (modified for specific plant)
Weeks before last frost:(Sowing date as the number of wks before or after
last frost date)
Sowing Depth (covr, thin, surf)
Space (transplant spacing (inches))
Life (a, b, p, ha, hp, ta, tp, etc.)
Transplant to: (fsun, psun, psha, fsha, dsha)
Care (soil requirement, height, etc) information for the yard label
Notes (other information, not for the yard label, like the Penstemon
society address, etc)
I'm experimenting with a few other fields, like a web picture link but I'm
pretty sure I won't have time to
maintain this. I don't keep track of where sometime is in the yard but perhaps
I should as sometimes in
spring, I don't know where things are.
I started 50 plant types from seed this spring and did a "mail merge" of
information printed on 1 inch by 3 inch
mailing labels. This is a great help to speed labeling, remember sowing
requirements and names. They seem to
hold up in the wet and sun, etc. for the several weeks it takes to get plants
up to size to set out.
I'm toying with another mail-merge to create 2" by 3" paper labels that I'd
cover on both sizes with clear packaging
tape for a yard label. I hope these labels would help me learn the care
requirements of plants better and their common
and botanical names. I don't particularly like the way people seem to react
to them: as pretentious or like you're really
anal retentive (as one of my neighbors recently pointed out to me!). I'd just
like to learn and keep track of all the little
details better. Perhaps I need to just spend more time watching my plants
instead of making databases, I'm not sure.
The metal labels strike me as too small, expensive and even more likely to
appear pretentious (though that's not particularly
my reaction).
Does anyone find "yard labels" worth the effort? A notebook seems simpler,
but is it at hand when you need it?
-Allan
--
Allan Anderson
Jardinage, Copper and Cedar Garden Art
Minneapolis, MN
http://www.visi.com/~response/jardinage.html
Forrest Ladd wrote:
> Anelle,
> I use MS Access for my plant database. Contact me if you are interested in
> what I do.
> Forrest
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