Free garden journal software

Depending on the option you choose, a garden planner can help:. Use this information to decide which plants and vegetables you should plant in your garden and check out the cheat sheets each planner may offer to help your plants thrive better than ever. With a web-based planner, you can zoom in and move your virtual garden around to place each feature where you want them, or rearrange as you see fit. This way, you can make notes and changes directly onto the page and store them in a nice three-ring binder.

Online tools and free software applications make the process easier than ever, and you can try them out before you waste even a penny. Not only are they free, these are the best garden planners you can find online that allow you to customize yourworksheet, calculate rainfall and the amount of soil you may need, look up pest control and growing information, or keep a diary.

The following are the best online garden planners that are entirely free to use, with no added costs after you use the app a few times and fall in love with it. Check out the features of each, as they all offer different ways to help gardeners build their best green spaces. Try out a few different options and see what works best for your needs. You may find yourself using a certain planner for short time needs before committing to the right one for you all year around. A grid helps you fill in the perfect amount of plants, or you can go with any of the 16 pre-planned options.

With a rainfall calculator, soil calculator to fill in raised garden boxes, and a disease and pest directory, your garden will be happy and healthy. This program has pre-made templates to help you get started, such as houses, fences, benches, and scenery. Customize your layout and add stones or brick paths as you see fit and plants of course.

There are hundreds of objects and types of trees, flowers, or shrubbery to choose from, and you can adjust the size of each or define the climate to find recommendations. Save your progress online or export the list of plants to take to the store.

This landscape design planner is totally free of charge, all you have to do is register. This program will ask you how many people are in your family to find the right number of veggies to grow, and allows you to choose the plants you enjoy most. It then calculates the amount of space you need to feed your family accurately. With pages, this hardcover book has a Fabrikoid artificial leather cover with rounded corners, and sewn-in pages. It measures 6.

This DIY option is perfect for those who want a tool that will stand up to the elements, from springtime showers to sweaty summer days and sprinkler runs. The Rite in the Rain Weatherproof Notebook comes in black, blue, gray, brown, green, tan, and yellow and is available from Amazon. When I first started growing my own vegetables, herbs, and flowers, I started big — with twelve 4-byfoot raised beds to plant in.

With so many beds, I had to have some way to plan my crops and keep track of which variety was planted where. I first started tracking my plantings on pieces of loose leaf paper — drawing out a map of my beds and making notes alongside my sketches — and I kept these pieces of paper in a binder.

But after a couple of years, I switched to a notebook, which was easier to carry outdoors for taking notes while inspecting my plants. It was also more convenient for keeping track of the other bits of information I wanted to record — such as pest problems, weather oddities, and bloom and harvest times. These days, my garden journal is as important a tool to me as my hori hori knife — and one I use year round.

Using this inventory, when I plan my January seed purchases, I have a list of all of my seeds in one convenient spot. This makes it easier to see what types of seeds I need to buy, and which I already have in stock. I sketch out a rough plan of my design for the year to start visualizing my nascent garden, referring to the notes in my journal from the previous year to make sure I include any needed improvements — such as necessary crop rotations, adding new beds or rows, or decommissioning ones that have become too shady since the trees have grown.

When I add these specifics, I page back to my designs for the previous few years, so that I can make sure to rotate crop families that are prone to the same diseases or pests — like veggies in the nightshade , cabbage, carrot, and squash families.

Once I get my cool season crop seeds in the ground, I like to keep notes on which peas and radishes push their brave little leaves up from the ground first. I also note dates when trees and flowers are in bloom, so that I can compare this data over the years.

Spring is also the time when I start my yearly harvest tally — and I keep this information in my trusty journal. I write down what I harvest, when, and how much it weighs — and I continue this throughout the growing season. In summer , it seems all my spare time is spent watering, weeding, harvesting, and preserving — but I always make time to jot down some notes in my journal during the hottest months of the year.

I also try to take the time to make notes on whether I like specific cultivars of certain plants or not. And when the temperatures begin to dip, I also write in the first light frost date and the first killing frost — and I consider this to be the start of a well-earned break from the garden before planting begins again.

Are you starting a journal for the first time, or thinking about upgrading your current record keeping system? Let me know in the comments and share your tips! Still feeling a little bookish? Here are a few more book reviews to bring you inspiration and guidance:. See our TOS for more details. Originally published on March 10, Uncredited photos: Shutterstock. With additional writing and editing by Allison Sidhu and Clare Groom.

Kristina Hicks-Hamblin lives on a dryland permaculture homestead in the high desert of Utah. Originally from the temperate suburbs of North Carolina, she enjoys discovering ways to meet a climate challenge. Kristina loves the challenges of dryland gardening and teaching others to use climate compatible gardening techniques, and she strives towards creating gardens where there are as many birds and bees as there are edibles.

Kristina considers it a point of pride that she spends more money on seeds each year than she does on clothes. What an article!! Thanks for the info about journals. I spent all night one night trying to figure out what would be best for me. Big thanks once again!! Glad you enjoyed the article, Ann! And yes, those brown notebooks are great for so many things, I just love them!

Happy gardening! Excellent Article! Thank you! Still trying to nail ONE down as well…. Thanks so much, Shelley! I always have a hard time picking just one journal… which is why I usually end up with a few extras for future use. Thank you so much for this!

It was really helpful to get a good idea of what to put in it. Hi Heather, Thanks for leaving a comment about your own plans for your gardening journal! Happy garden planning! Thanks for all the info. Really enjoyed your article many thanks and happy gardening.

Will be more than happy to forward this article to my colleagues and customers. Hi Avon, Thanks so much for your kind words! Happy garden journaling! And there is one other item that I consider essential: my gardening journal. Which type would work best for you? Does it include blank, dot grid, or graph pages for designing your layouts? Does it include plenty of pages for note taking? Since I was making some printable page layouts for my new journal, I decided to fancy them up a little and add a few extras.

That way, I could share the free printable garden journal pages on the blog for anyone interested in starting or updating their own garden journal. These printables are free for your personal use as a little present from us to you.

We welcome social media shares and linking, but please link to this post, not the download direct. These printables have been uploaded for sharing via Dropbox as a consolidated PDF file, with a separate file for each colour scheme.

Click the link s above to view and download. You do not need to have a Dropbox account to access or download the files. The pages are A4 our local paper default , so simply fit to page if you are using a different size, such as standard letter. Mix-and-match to create your own custom journal, basic or detailed. There is intentionally a lot of choice, overlap, and similar worksheets with different formats or degrees of detail so that you can mix-and match what works for you. Check out our post on keeping a garden journal for ideas, tips, tools, techniques, and more.