Garden Journaling: Celebrate Your Harvest and Plan for Next Season!

Gardening is a lifetime of learning by experience. Even master gardeners have new successes and challenges each season. You can expand your gardening knowledge by writing down what you observe and learn each season and year after year. Keeping a garden journal can help you go from a beginner to a wise expert.

Garden journaling is a simple way to become a better gardener. A garden journal is a place to write your observations and appreciate what you are learning.

Each garden is unique with its own microclimate. Your backyard growing space will be different than your neighbor’s. By keeping track of what you’re growing and how it performs in your garden, you will learn what does well and why. With this information, you can make a better plan for next season and try growing more challenging plants.

Even if you haven’t been keeping a regular garden journal, the winter months can be the perfect time to catch up. During this time, you can reflect on what you enjoyed while planning what you want to change or add.

Here are some simple ways to keep a gardening journal so you can grow a better garden every year.

Choose a sturdy notebook to start a garden journal. You want something that will last several years and stand up to a little dirt. You can also use digital methods, such as gardening or note-taking apps. A garden journal can also be a calendar. Each day, jot down what you observe.

There are many things you could write in your gardening journal. What you decide to write will be a helpful resource for you and your unique garden.

What gardening tips did I learn this year?

What challenges came up?

What were my successes?

What changes do I want to make before planting next year?

What do I want to keep the same?

What varieties you planted, as well as when and where.

Note dates of when you started seeds indoors and when they were ready for transplanting outdoors.

Write down temperatures and weather.

Take note of pests and diseases and anything you did to control them.

It can also be helpful to note the date when pests appeared. It will help you know when to expect them the following year.

Note where you purchased seeds or starts.

Note what you may want to plant again or something new to try.

It can be helpful to take pictures and add those to your garden journal. You might even want to keep some pressed flowers in the pages.

If you’re highly scientific, you might take notes every day. For most gardeners, that level of detail isn’t going to happen. Weekly notes or even every other week will be helpful. Take note of specific dates when planting and harvesting. This will help you plan for next year. You’ll know if you need to plant something earlier or later to have the expected harvest.

Turn to your garden journal, and you’ll have the answer to that question. Review your notes and see what you will grow again, what you will skip, and what you will add. You can also draw out your garden design based on what you did the year before, especially if you need to rotate crops.

Helpful Gardening Tips from Our Garden Journal

• Make more starts than you intend to plant. That way, you have extras in case some don't germinate. Or if any die after transplanting, you'll have some to replace them with. This also allows you to plant only the strongest of the starts, giving your garden the best fighting chance!

• “Fertilizing regularly after the seedlings get a little bigger makes such a difference - I was amazed!” - Meghann 

• “I learned that tomato stalks and leaves are poisonous to ingest because they are in the nightshade family and create cyanide when eaten.” - Nicole

• “You can never have too many plant markers! And where you put them matters.  If you place the marker too close to the plant, it will get swallowed up by the plants, and you will have no idea which varieties are which.” - Sara

• "I learned not to pick green beans while they're wet, as they could form rust spots on later harvests." - Maddie

• "Sunlight really does matter. The flowers I grew in a shady spot never grew as large or had as many blooms as those grown in full sun.” - Beverly

• “When transplanting tomato starts, pick off all the branching leaves, leaving only the top bunch, and plant deep into the ground to where the leafed top is visible. Those fuzzy hairs on the stalk will become new roots, resulting in a well-established tomato plant.” - Ashley

• “Some flowers love the cool weather such as nasturtiums. These edible plants make a beautiful garden.” - Patty