Soliciting any tips you all might have on record keeping

[kyredneck]

In all my gardening years I've never actually kept any written records. What are the important events that you record? When the seed is planted? Or emergence? Blooming? Fruit set? DTM?

I know this is probably stupid questions but I'm curious to know what some of you look for.

Also, is there a good pre-formatted journal/diary out there that you prefer to use?

[templeton]

KY,
I keep most of my records in a 5mm = 1/4 inch graph paper notebook, using pencil(I treated myself and got a nice Moleskine one - leather bound!) On one page I have a schematic map of my beds, that I annotate - I use two maps a year, ,spring/summer, and autumn/winter. On the facing page I keep a written record of sowing, plantout, and brief other records one line per date entry. I tag important stuff in the garden using lightweight aluminum tags with a copper wire twist-tie, emboss these with a ballpoint pen, and connect to either a bamboo stake or trellis.
Pencil doesn't wash off if the book gets wet, and can be altered when you make mistakes.

I keep a separate book (same style and layout) for my breeding projects - I'm running two major projects, so peas goes in the front, roots in the back - only need one breeding book in the garden.
The reason for keeping the records dictates the info recorded - general gardening stuff I keep sowing and plantout records, with occasional notes on first crop(if earliness is desired trait), harvest dates, disease problems and treatments eg 'spray all tomatoes with pot bi carb', yield - but if I'm doing a big trial I use the next double page and layout a big spreadsheet - varieties down the left, weekly columns recording gross weight per week going across the top.
Breeding notes usually record everything - variety, cross, parents, date of seed harvest, date of sowing, number sown, sowing medium, heat or not, pre-treatment or not, number emerged, number planted out, when and where planted, yield notes etc.
If I do a cross, I record it in the book, and on an aluminium tag on the flower.
A pic of the note book

Sorry, Picasa won't let me load a bigger photo - I hate the new picasa...

[flowerweaver]

I keep track of everything on MyFolia.com (http://myfolia.com/gardeners/flowerweaver/dashboard). It's a fabulous way of keeping track of seeds, where they came from, all stages of plant development--from the germination to harvest. There's also a way to journal any notes that might not fit into the database structure and a way to attach photos. It provides a timeline for each plant, and based on your last frost will tell you when to start seeds. There's a collective plant wiki. You can generate reminders and to-do lists, print harvest tallies, track seed trades. You can set up different gardens/fields and keep track of what is in each. If you have a smart phone (I don't, no cell service where I live) it will print those funny square things for plant labels and then you can use their app to record information directly in the field about plants on your phone. Use as much or as little of the service as you want. The only thing it doesn't offer is a layout program for diagramming your garden. But you can do that in something else and attach it as a scan. Anyone interested just PM me your email address and I can send you an invitation for a free membership to try out. The paid membership has more bells and whistles and is quite affordable. It's international. I have used it for seven years and highly recommend it.

[kazedwards]

I use myfolia as well. I also keep a layout and a hard copy of tracking in a binder. This will be the first full season that I will have used myfolia.

The things I record are seed starting, potting up, planting out, and harvest dates. Also keep a journal for daily doings that are worth noting. I also keep track of harvest size by number and weight.

[12540dumont]

Well,
My farm journal looks like this:

January 23, 2015...warm and sunny. 70 degrees (F).

Planted to trays: Strawberry -Fragola Quattro Stagioni
I always list every type and where I plant them. So if I'm plant to the farm my journals says: Planted to field:
transplants - Mare des Bois -strawberry. Planted in Grapeside. (Oh yeah this helps with crop rotation).

My farm is divided into rooms, each has a name. I write where and what row/stake # something is planted in so that at mid season if I can't remember what the heck something is, I can go to my journal and look it up. When you plant 10 lettuces...okay you get the problem. I also take photos...every week of EVERY bed. Even if it's fallow. I start with row 1 and work my way through 22. Yes I know that 15 has asparagus and will for the next 15 years. But guess what? plants don't always do what you expect, by keeping a photo record every year, even your journal entries make sense. Stops 90% of spousal arguments as well

I also have a spread sheet in NUMBERS that I record every incoming seed. When I'm out of it, I mark the cell in red. This way, in a minute I know whether or not I've used all the beet seed. Or anything else I'm likely to purchase seed of.

Otherwise the seed journal on my computer may look like this:

Corn:
Dar: Cherokee White Four -2013
FF CWF2-2014 (2 quart jars).

The second listing means that from my farm, I saved 2 quart jars of seed in 2014.

When I get down to a pint, I go back to the seed list and change the quantity to 1 pint. Then I highlight it in pink.

So instantly I know pink or red...not enough to share and I need to buy more seed, or mix in what I have from the original source and replant.

When I do trials, I used to post them here, but the photo uploading is so stupid and time consuming, that now I post them to my blog instead. This way, if I have cooperators or someone who acted as a seed benefactor, I can just point them to the source, as well as updating other farmers at the same time.

The deal with trials is that so many seeds, in 5 years you and your spouse and your kids and your best friend will each remember the name of the 5 best melons, carrots, beans differently. Oh yeah, there it is on the blog: yield, taste, disease. It's hard to argue with science and photos.

There's a real good reason to make a hard copy of every trial you make and paste it to your farm journal. When you're out in the field, book in hand, everything makes sense.

In the winter when Leo and I walk the fields, we have the book in hand and talk about where and what. We make a tentative plan. That way Leo knows WHAT rows and rooms need to be tilled first. I know what I need to shovel compost in. Early on we need to know what beds need to come out and what needs to go in.

In some climates, you may need to do only one planting but here a planting in Grapeside may look like this:

October: Favas/Lupini's/Garlic
June: Squash/melons/Peppers
September: Broc/Cauli/Spinach
April: Tomatoes/lettuce/cukes
October:Lettuce/Leeks/Kale
June: Okra/Eggplant/Limas


Gosh by the time I get to September 2 years later, if I hadn't written down that we already had in Grapeside, I wouldn't know that we wanted to plant a grain rotation.

It's much harder when you have many crops in many rows and beds. Sometimes, I'm standing there thinking there's never been onions here until Leo comes up behind me with the book and says: "Yeah but we had leeks here just 2 seasons ago." My how time flies when you're farming.

I'm pretty sure there are easier systems then mine out there. One of our best things for the farm that we ever did was make a map, give everything a name, and design a future.

Even if I can't buy water tanks or a pond for the farm today, I know where they should and would be, when.

[reed]

I never have either. Always have the best intentions and sometimes have started writing things on a calendar but about July or so I accept the "maybe next year" technique.

I resolved to do better this year, especially with catching the breeding and landrace bug. I started with precise measurements and scale drawings of the gardens and saved them to the computer so I can print them out as needed. Next I set up spread sheets in Google Drive and dug into the seed cabinet to start a complete inventory. I have a sheet for each thing, corn, beans, tomatoes and so on, tracking variety, source, # on hand, age and other stuff relevant to the seed. (I print all this out and put it in a binder as I don't trust computers.)

A few more evenings and that will be done and I will know for the first time exactly what I have and what I still want to get. Then I will start planning what is to be planted where. Then, I'll make or get some kind of journal to track how things do including how we like it and the weather and other conditions. At least that's the plan, maybe this year.

[toad]

I use my camera to take photos. I can always look up the date the photo was taken. Photos also gives me informations I didn't know I would need later. And I'm a visual person.
But sometimes I have special reason to write things. Like selecting for better harvest of favabeans - I weighed every pod, wrote weight, plant no. pod no. on the seed enveloped. Afterwards I calculated the total harvest of each plant. I did it only one season, but this single step of selection I could notice every year since. If I want to push the yield even further up, I could do it again.
I guess you have to figure out how it comes naturally for you :-)

[zeedman]

The amount & type of records to keep, would depend upon what you expect to do with the information. The first records I ever used were just a planning map, a list of the varieties planted, and the dates planted & harvested (for DTM). At season's end, I would mark each variety on the list with "thumbs up" (will grow again), "thumbs down" (never again), or ? (try again).

Because I am a collector, though, I needed a better system of data management. I keep a card file for any saved seed, listing the variety name, species, source, and the year(s) grown for each seed lot. A smaller card (with variety, year, and location grown) accompanies every fruit or seed harvest, from picking to seed storage... which eliminates the 'OMG, I don't remember what variety that is' syndrome. Each garden plot is mapped out on graph paper, and I keep those maps so I can better plan rotations from year to year... or if a cross is discovered in saved seed, I can go back to identify the most likely parents.

About 10 years back, I made several forms for detailed data collection. One tracks dates (seed, transplant, flower, green harvest, ripe/dry seed harvest), and flower color. I also make several notes on that form: seed age & number germinated (so I can track germination rates over time), the transplant code (I use numbers on the transplant markers) and the location planted. A sister form is a harvest record, which lists each variety, and records the number of plants (or row feet) and the weight (or number) for each picking... I generally only use that as time allows, or when experimenting with a new variety or method. Both of those forms feed a master data form for each variety, which also has places for detailed history, plant spacing, cultural notes, disease/insect/environmental issues, and culinary observations. That 2-sided form is very comprehensive, and I hardly ever fill everything out... but it has places for everything I've observed. Filling in the blanks will be a good project when I retire, which is not that many years from now.

Guess you can tell I'm still a paper junkie. I have been meaning to start putting more info into Excel, but never seem to get around to it, and I'm still quite comfortable with paper records.

I need to collect more photos of everything I grow, though, something similar to what Grunt used to post of his grow outs. The lack of a good digital camera should be corrected when I update to a high-resolution smart phone... something I am also far less likely to forget on the way to the garden.

[littleminnie]

My weak spots with records are:
1. labeling varieties well so as to see which ones did well and not dropping trays
2. keeping track of how I felt about certain varieties and things I tried
3. keeping track of how many and which plant varieties sold well to customers and how many to grow

However I am good at other record keeping. I use a lot of excel files for seed lists, crop specifics, seed starting, crop layout/field map, how much of varieties to grow and that sort of thing. I print free calendar pages calendar pages and write when to start seeds and when to plant along the edges and then what I accomplished in actuality each day. For planting maps when planting to see what varieties went where, I use scratch paper from work. It is the signs that go behind greeting cards. They are thicker than paper and I can take one out with me when planting and see what varieties to put where in a bed. I usually do it alphabetically. Then I keep those. I also use markers in the rows too but having it written down is really great. For instance I will label tomato cages at planting with hot pink duct tape and a sharpie but I also write down the varieties in the row on the cardstock.

[kyredneck]

Thank you all so much for sharing these things. I haven't been commenting because I've been kinda out of sync with a cold with a very bad cough (I'm coughing as I type) that just kills any enthusiasm for anything right now. Doctor gave me a shot of steroids yesterday that has at least perked me up some, don't know about helping this cough though.

[reed]

kyredneck, put about an inch of Tang in a cup with enough water to make a paste, heat in microwave. Add double shot Wild Turkey. If it doesn't work, try again.

[oldmobie]

Last year I did most of my record keeping with an android app called acalendar. It's just a calendar, but it syncs with google calendar. My records can't get lost, they're "in the cloud".

This year I'm trying out Trello. Again, I'm using it as an android app. It syncs to the cloud, lets me attach files and pictures, add comments, create (and check off) check lists, and share records online, even to people who don't have the app or a Trello account.

[flowerweaver]

oldmobie I believe MyFolia does all that now.

[oldmobie]

Mar 12, 2016 19:39:56 GMT -5 flowerweaver said:

oldmobie I believe MyFolia does all that now.

I think so. I even joined. I'm just too cheap to upgrade from the free account. As I recall, I encountered some limitation with the free account. Number of gardens? Number of pictures? I don't remember.

[flowerweaver]

Mar 12, 2016 19:51:41 GMT -5 oldmobie said:

Mar 12, 2016 19:39:56 GMT -5 flowerweaver said:

oldmobie I believe MyFolia does all that now.

I think so. I even joined. I'm just too cheap to upgrade from the free account. As I recall, I encountered some limitation with the free account. Number of gardens? Number of pictures? I don't remember.

At $22/year I think it has been well worth it's price. I don't have cell phone service where I live, but if I did have a smart phone, I would use their app to print those square jumbled info things (am I a dinosaur or what?) on plant tags and upload information directly from the field and greenhouse.