Do You Record Your Plot?

[Greenleaves]

I am a camera and diary type. I paste the pictures into PowerPoint and work from that. The diary keeping is something I have carried on from my ole pops xx

[SaraJH]

That's great, I'm doing something similar.

One sheet for each bed and I'm going to laminate them so I can write on them with a china graph pencil and then wipe clean/ update as the beds are re-sown.

[Lumpy]

Hangs head in gardening shame and admits........................erm........................nope!

[Jungle Jane]

I haven't planned anything yet,I remember what was planted where last year & the year before,so I can rotate crops. I'l draw it out on paper soon & label it with plant varieties once they've been planted.

[plam]

I love a plan so much! That's why I'm called plam, it's what my other half calls me when I'm enjoying myself planning. A mix of pam (my name) and plan.

I have a spreadsheet (or three actually: veg, herbs and flowers) for variety, what I've got or need to buy, when to sow, plant etc. Then I have calendar entries that pop up to tell me when to sow/plant. I keep a written diary of what I've done each day and things I've noticed and I have plans of the plot on graph paper showing what goes where and also the dates of planting/harvest. And I have a notebook where i record the info i've looked up and learnt about how to grow things, and also to do lists.

Keeps me occupied on those winter nights!

[Small pumpkin]

No drawings or technical graphs. Just lists Lots and lots of lists!

[Scoot]

I did have a plan / crop rotation plan which I wrote out earlier this year but it's already been binned as I realised I'd cocked it up. I know where everything was last year so I'll just be doing a basic crop rotation.

[hamamelis]

I always plan very carefully. Spend ages drawing out beds, checking growing times, rotation, crop size and height.


Sometimes my plans are so good, I even follow bits of them!

[Root66]

I photograph all the time. If i sow something, i try to picture the row and the packet. The image should then contain the date and time.

This year have a full-on spreadsheet going. Containing an activity dairy. to do list, sowing calendar, stock, crops layout plan, etc

I enjoy keeping this in order, it doesnt take too long. Just nice around xmas time to look back through the year, especially with all the pictures. It's actually amazing to see how much things change throughout the year. I'd forget most things without the diary and photos.

[Bigmallly]

It's actually amazing to see how much things change throughout the year. I'd forget most things without the diary and photos.

That's what I like about the Annual Calendar on the vine.

[AkionTotocha]

I don't have a plot, so mainly squeeze things in the garden beds (until they get noticed as "Hey, that's not a flower, it's a vegetable!") but I am making a list of how much food I get from each plant - I really want to save a little money on groceries so I need to know how much it would cost to get all those toms etc.

[bussinspain]

I keep a garden diary - recording all sowings, potting on, transplanting etc., and the location of veggies. My diary is a spreadsheet on the computer. I also have a page for each of the 4 veggie beds, and more pages for each month of the year with lists of the Spanish and English sowings. I can easily look back at last years information if needed - for example the parsnips last year failed until I sowed them in May, so that's what I am going to do this year, rather than waste lots of seeds.

[Gillykat]

I love a plan so much! I keep a written diary of what I've done each day and things I've noticed and I have plans of the plot on graph paper showing what goes where and also the dates of planting/harvest. And I have a notebook where i record the info i've looked up and learnt about how to grow things, and also to do lists.

Keeps me occupied on those winter nights!

I think we must have been separated at birth!!! I have my daily diary in which I make a note of what jobs I've done...at the back is a list of what I've sown and I'll record the date, the date it germinated, plant out, flowered/cropped etc and any notes about taste and whether to grow it next year etc (last year radishes got a big underlined ''YUCK!!!!'' and tomatoes got ''Gorgeous! Sow later''

I'm forever doodling rough plans on bits of paper at work when it's quiet and this is the one I did the other week.....whether I stick to it is another thing as I am already mulling over the idea of digging a small pond in the area where I have the pots of daffodil bulbs and turning that whole section into a wildlife area with veggies restricted to the main raised bed areas (sunniest spots), the polytunnel, greenhouse and fruit area.

[Alison]

Big spreadsheet which gets tweaked every year which has every seed I own listed under columns for type, group, variety, direct / pot down, final location, no of seeds I have, comments, no to sow, month to sow, no of seedlings, actual date sown and if they should be sown early, mid if end of the month. The comments section is used say where things are to be sown and to log progress and an indication if if they've done well. Can't be bothered to weigh produce so comments like loads or poor are used. Takes a few minutes every week to update and is much better than a diary as I can sort and filter. Would be lost without it.

[Martin H]

As well as the overall plan I showed you earlier, I have a detailed plan for each of my 25 beds. Each one gets its own tab on the spreadsheet. This is an example:



As well as forward planning, I record what I've done on each bed as I go along. But as you can see, I haven't yet worked out what to put in this bed after the onions and garlic come out in the summer ... probably just green manure because winter brassicas would break up the rotation plan. Maybe a late sowing of French beans? But I digress.

I find that this method is pretty easy to manage and does help me work out what's going to go where and what preparations I need to make.