How to Use the Garden Journal

The best education for any gardener is experience, and keeping a gardening journal is a great way to build up a record of your experience. That way you can learn from the things that work—and don’t! In this short video, we’ll show you how using the Garden Journal can help make this year’s garden your most successful ever—and next year’s even better!

We’re introducing a brand new Garden Journal which is intuitively easy to use, looks stunning and, best of all, it’s completely free.

A gardening journal helps you to keep track of what you’ve sown, planted, tended and harvested during the growing season. Keeping a gardening journal is a fantastic way to build up a record of your own unique gardening experiences, so you learn from thethings that work—and don’t!

By referring back to previous years you can refine your methods to suit your garden’s unique growing conditions. You can record any pests and diseases you encounter, and note down the strategies you used to bring them under control. By keeping a journal, you can improve the way you garden.

Introducing the Garden Journal

We’ve come up with what we believe is a super-convenient journal that is intuitive and a pleasure to use. The Garden Journal can be used on your smartphone, tablet or computer, and makes it easy to upload photos and notes straight from your device. You can record as you garden, and your Journal will help you to learn with every note and photo you add. Best of all, it’s completely free to use!

Record Your Gardening

To open the Garden Journal, login to your Garden Planner account and select the Garden Journal link. The Journal will automatically show you the current week, but you can choose to view a different week from the Timeline at the top.

You can add your own notes, observations, and ideas, or choose any of the Planting, Watering, Tending or Harvesting options to record your garden tasks. The Tending option is further divided so you can record when you’ve weeded, fertilized, transplanted, mulched or pruned.

As you add more records to the week, the icons and Add buttons display a visual summary of your activity, while the Timeline at the top of the page provides a snapshot of your weekly activity - light green indicates Planting, orange indicates Harvesting etc.

The Garden Journal makes it easy to add photos of your garden from your computer or device. If you’re using a phone or tablet, you can take a photo and upload it to your Journal straight away.

It’s easy to change anything, at any time. Select a day, view the details, then change the quantity or planting method; or select a plant symbol to remove that entry if you need to. To edit an entry from a previous week, select the week from the Timeline at the top then select ‘Edit it’.

The Garden Journal enables you to make your gardening more efficient by planning ahead. Select a future week to add a reminder and make a note (you can add a related plant here too). Your reminder will be logged for reference, and can be edited or deleted at any time.

Future weeks display typical temperature highs and lows for those dates, while the current week includes an up-to-date weather forecast so you can plan the best days to work in the garden or, for example, to protect your plants against a late frost.

As you add more entries to your Journal, you’ll be able to look back at previous weeks, months and years, helping your to learn from your own unique experiences. Or add reminders for the following season so you know exactly when tasks are due.

To start using the Garden Journal—for free!—visit the Garden Planner website and create or login to your account.

Try Out the Almanac Garden Planner for Free

As a courtesy, the online Almanac Garden Planner is free for 7 days. This is plenty of time to play around on your computer and try it out. There are absolutely no strings attached. We are most interested in encouraging folks to try growing a garden of goodness! 

Try out the Garden Planner on your computer (for free).