I want to thank those who responded yesterday to my post on garden journaling. I’m pleased you told me you thought it was a good idea and that you would start a journal. I googled garden journaling today and found out it is NOT a new idea. It seems gardeners have been indexing and journaling their veggie and flower gardens for years. I wish I knew about it a few years ago.
As I related the other day, I had made a few gardening mistakes when I moved to this house. Primarily, I made many errors in the choice of the plant as it related to size and sun requirement. Because of these errors, I lost many plants that didn’t do well or didn’t make the winter. I live in zone 6, and we get a hard winter with temps below freezing and snow. Although lately, we no longer seem to get the weeks below zero nor the 12 inches of snow at a fall as we did when I first moved here.
Front garden
Supplies
Binder
So thanks to your encouragement, I began to get materials together to make the journal. In the initial post, I showed you a small notebook I started, but now after looking at other garden journals, I feel that may have been too small for my needs. I noticed most of the forms and binders on my Google search were the larger 8.5 by 11. I looked for a gardening three-ring binder and found than by Vera Bradley on Amazon and make your own on Zazzle. I liked the one on Zazzle and ordered that binder. Also, it was 1.5 in vs. the 1 inch Bradley, and I thought I might need extra room if I started gluing items into the binder.
I do have to warn you these binders were all pretty expensive for just being a three-ring binder. I got mine because I thought the beautiful picture would be of encouragement to use the journal. You can easily buy a binder in a color you like or buy one with a cover pocket and place a photo of your garden in the pocket.
Vera Bradley
Forms
Next, I tried to find pre-printed forms I could punch and put into the binder. I wanted a flower ID sheet, a monthly list of things to do sheet, a pruning schedule sheet, a plant schedule, and a fertilizer sheet. But I could not find ready-made forms. However, I did find a great selection of garden journal forms on Etsy for download, and they were a good bargain, especially compared to that binder. Smile
Paper
Finally, I ordered lined paper of a heavier weight than just standard paper. I found two college ruled and wide ruled. I got the lighter wide-ruled, but I’ll buy the college rule if that isn’t sturdy enough for gluing.
Miscelliance
Of course. I’ll need pens, pencils, scissors, and glue. I don’t use seed, but I noticed some gardeners put three-ring holed plastic pocket sheets to hold seed packets to identify the brands they used—another good idea.
Well, I think this will get me off to a good start anyway. Share if you are into garden journaling, and let us know how you are doing.
I’ll start on the front garden next.
Dara
