Grown in in New England
A big part of my garden experience is about learning and improving year after year. For this reason, I like to take a lot of notes, which help me to identify patterns and adjustments for the following growing season. When I looked for a garden journal/planner to fit my needs, I couldn't find one. The printed notebook versions didn't have enough pages or enough space for my large handwriting. When I looked for digital versions to use with my iPad, I only found partially helpful designs.
So, this is when I started to create my own journal pages back in 2020 and refined them over 2 years to the point that they are exactly what I was looking for. After I designed my new version with Canva in fall of 2022, I was surprised how beautiful it turned out, so I wanted to share it with world. I was also lucky enough to have some awesome garden friends looking at it for review purposes and helped me to get it over the finish line.
The Journal comes in two versions: 1 high quality digital template which can be used with an app like GoodNotes and an ink-friendly print version as most gardeners still prefer a paper version. The advantage of both is unlimited space, as you can add additional pages as your garden grows.
It is structured in 12 Chapters plus 1 free form chapter for anything, you want to capture which I haven't thought of:
Chapter 1: Garden Goals
Define your garden goals for the current garden year. It will help you focus on what is important to you when times get stressful. It is also fun to dream about what you want to archive in the new year.
Chapter 2: Garden Projects & Budgets
This chapter collects all garden project ideas and tracks the garden budget throughout the year. This documentation helps to stay on top of your garden budget and have transparency over your garden related expenses.
Chapter 3: Garden Calendar
The calendar helps organize and structure all garden tasks in a visual way.
Chapter 4: Garden Plans
In this chapter, all garden plans can be sketched out and collected.
Chapter 5: Seed Starting Plan & Plant Log
The seed starting plan is a helpful layout to help plan your seed starting activities. Once the seeds are started, the plant log can keep track of the plant varieties throughout the year and take notes.
Chapter 6: Watering Log
Keep track of which garden section was watered and when
Chapter 7: Harvest Tracker
The harvest tracker is a helpful tool to see how much produce you harvested. Over time, this information can be used to compare how different garden years compared to each other.
Chapter 8: Fertilizer Log
Keep track what was fertilized, when and which product/dosage.
Chapter 9: Pest Log
The pest log is a vital part of the garden journal and helps to understand over the years when which garden pests show up and what removal plan worked best.
Chapter 10: Social Media Content
A lot of gardeners have social media accounts these days and this section provides you with a structure to plan out your content.
Chapter 11: Journal Notes
This section is a classic journal area for free form note taking.
Chapter 12: Garden Review
After a garden year it is important to take some time to reflect on what worked well and should be changed the following year.
Interested to see it for yourself? Check out my Etsy-Listing here.
Copyright 2023 - Grown in New England