MM

Maybe such a Journal software would be good for very busy people, but I keep all my garden information in Excel worksheets.

I have graphs that show the size of the beds, circles for larger plant spacing in the beds, planting dates and anticipated harvest dates, watering, fertilizer, and other nutrient needs, notes everywhere. I even have little formulas that calculate the anticipated date of harvest from direct sowing or setting transplants out. It even calculates backwards so I can determine the best time to plant for fall harvests.

Then I have a separate gardening calendar showing planting or sowing dates, ambient and soil temperatures, rainfall, when to fertilize, when to add other nutrients, when harvests started, notes about diseases and pests, etc.

This is not something I find tedious. I love doing it, so it is just more pleasure of gardening!

I wish I could do an Excel worksheet. I really don't have the time. I hate to actually do ink notes. Does anyone have an excel file they could share or software that really helps?

You are welcome to a copy of my Excel file if you think it might be useful. It might not be, since everyone organizes things differently. At any rate, if you are interested, click on my name and you'll be taken to a page that has an email link, "Send me an email". I'll send it to you via email.

I'm going to try a database this year hoping as years go by it'll be easied to sort out what I'm looking for.

I tried ordering from the The Garden Tracker website (gardentracker.com) and was getting an error, I contacted them, and they fixed the issue. I have ordered the garden tracker software, and should receive it soon, I will let you know what I think about it in the next couple of days.

Hey Lynda,
I'll be waiting to hear your "review".

No software yet? Just wondering how they ship. First class?

Had not heard of the GardenTracker site, but I found this one a couple of weeks ago. They let you have a 30 day free trial on line before you purchase; I'm going to buy it.

Hope some of you will take a look. Happy Growing!

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow Veg website

IG

That looks like a British website. The cost is listed in pounds, but maybe they'll convert it for you since it's a download and pay-on-line deal!

I received my copy of this software yesterday. I have "played" with it for a bit and have discovered a couple things.
One is, the references on the disc are mainly for flower varieties. Very few vegetables. This was set up for mainly flower gardens. However, you can add as many varieties as you like, so once you add all your varieties of lettuce, peppers, onions, etc, they will be in the list for reference.
Second is, there is a ton of ways to do tracking of lists varieties and such.
I'll report more later.

What do you guys look for in such software? What kind of features/capability would please you?

Since I am so interested in gardening and am a software engineer I may actually consider developing something...

I've considered building a free web based application for this also, but I don't know what features people would want.

What's that saying ~ "Be careful what you ask for." Well, you asked for it, Trant. ;) Hope you're not sorry you asked when you're done reading what will likely be an extremely looooong post. ;)

Basing it as a blog would be great, with links to separate sections (databases) for what's being grown (veggies, flowers, fruit trees, etc.), suppliers/sources (seed companies, local nurseries, etc.), each garden or section of the yard ("Potager", "Veggie Garden", "Front Flowerbed"), etc.

Linkability ~ It'd be nice if every time I typed something in the blog that there was an entry for ("Rattlesnake Beans", "Natural Gardener", "Pinetree Seeds", "Potager Garden", etc.), it would automatically link it to the page for that item.

For me, searchability system-wide (in titles, entries, everything) would be important. That way, in December when I'm trying to figure out which tomatoes (for instance) to order, it would be easy to do a system-wide search for any mention of "tomatoes" or "tomato" so I could refresh my memory on what kinds I've planted in all years past and read notes on how they did. It'd be nice to have the option of narrowing the search to just titles, just notes, etc. And would be great to be able to search phrases as well, a la Google ~ "seed starting" or "setting out".

Easy access to information multiple ways ~ it'd be nice if clicking on a month or day in a list (in calendar form maybe?) would bring up whatever I wrote on that day, AND when I clicked on an entry for the aforementioned Rattlesnake Beans and went to that page, it'd be nice to have a list at the bottom (with clickable dates/synopses) of every date/entry where I talked about it in the "blog".

About the separate sections for each "thing" (supplier, variety, etc.)...

~~ Supplier/source section: A separate page for each where I could type in address, what I received from them, when, who I talked to, etc. ~ even any notes I wanted to add. A nice feature would be, during entering of a new entry, being able to choose from a list of suppliers I'd already entered and it would give a link to the supplier's page from the veggie's entry. Being able to designate the specific type of source would be nice, too (mail order seed house, local nursery or store, internet trade, gift from friend, personally saved seed, any others you can think of).

~~ Plant section: An auto-fill feature here would be great. When I go to add a new entry, it would be nice for the "flow" of it to go like this: Choose "new entry" ~ next window allows me to choose between vegetable, flower, fruit tree, etc. (I choose "vegetable") ~ next window gives a list of all veggies (I choose "Bean, Pole, Dry") ~ next window is a list of all "Bean, Pole, Dry"s I've already added, if any, along with "Add new". If I choose "Add new", it'll auto-fill the basic cultural info specific to pole beans grown for drying, but leave all other things blank. If I choose "Rattlesnake Beans", it'll auto-fill everything I've already input on that entry, including past years' notes ~ or maybe it'd be better if it'd just take me to the "update entry" page for that item where I could note that I'm growing it again in 2009.

~~ Garden/Yard Area section: Separate pages for each garden or section of yard. If there would be any way possible to draw a garden map in this, that would be perfect, but I imagine the coding for this would be awfully labor-intensive, huh? At the very least, a specific place to upload an image of a garden map would be good, with a link to that featured prominently on the page.

It'd also be nice to closely tie previous entries to new entries. On those Rattlesnake Beans, it'd be nice to be able to go to that entry and see all previous years' info/notes on the same page, atleast via a list of clickable links. If I click on the Rattlesnake entry, I'd love to see a page with variety name at the top, cultural info below that, and then the notes from all years below that, maybe with a couple inches of each note showing and "Read more" link at end of each, or a list of dates when I talked about them in the blog and/or added notes somewhere, or simply each year listed as links to a page that shows the list for whichever year clicked. It'd also be nice if the most recent was always at the top.

Probably the best thing you could do in designing garden software would be to make everything changeable since we're all so different in our likes and dislikes. For instance, when wanting to read the "blog" or look back on previous years, it'd be nice to have the option of choosing from a menu that looks like a calendar, or one that is in list form (all text). Other options that'd probably be nice would be an on/off for the auto-fill (maybe even the ability to turn it off on different sections ~ for instance, off on source/supplier section, but leave on in the plant section), being able to "hide" cultural info on each plant entry page so it just shows variety name and list of notes, the ability to see brief synopses of each note/blog entry on each variety page OR just see a list of dates where it was mentioned, the aforementioned search narrowing, and even the ability to move things around on the entry pages (for instance, I may like having "Bean, Pole, Dry" at the top of the Rattlesnake bean entry, where someone else would prefer "Rattlesnake Bean" to be at the top), and I'm sure I'll think of other things. Something else nice would be the ability to customize page background colors, text colors, font, text size, and even to insert some background images.

The ability to automatically publish each "blog" entry to the internet would be wonderful. Of course the user would have to set up a blog first on our own, but if your software could work with it, that would be grand.

Can it weed my garden for me, too? *snicker*

And images! MUST have the ability to add multiple images. For me, pictures of my garden are so important ~ sometimes they're the only type of record-keeping I can do. Being able to add them to each variety's page as well as insert them into the "blog" (and publish them when the blog entry is published) would be so incredibly handy.

If you're serious about designing garden software, email me. I can explain this in pictures a lot better ~ I could draw it out in Paint )or on paper and scan it) as flowcharts (I think that's the right word ~ kind of like family trees are drawn out) and give examples of what each page looks like in my head, and email it to you. If you're serious, I'd love to help you with this as I'm desperate for some sort of garden journal software that's truly user friendly and genuinely easy to use (keeping a garden journal, for me, is almost a chore, so anything that's so easy a child could do it would greatly increase my chances of actually using it). All of the ones I've ever seen just aren't user friendly, no matter what they say.

trant,
I just ran across this thread while looking everywhere for software. Here's what I'm looking for:
I'm not a master gardener. I want to research a plant, order it, and then enter it into the software. e.g., Speedwell Veronica longifolia eveline. It could pull up by Speedwell, then types of Speedwell, or any number of ways. Then it would pull the pertinent info for that plant (e.g., full sun, 12"-20", space 12" apart, etc.)
SPECIFICALLY what I haven't seen in any program is that it then adds that plant to a gardening maintenance calendar (e.g., plants that need to be cut back in the fall, plants that need a certain type of fertilizer in the spring only, or monthly, or weekly). When you enter the name of the plant and then it automatically gives you the info, I'd want it to also be editable (is that a word?)
It could then say "this plant needs to be deadheaded below the spent bloom. Add to calendar? If yes, add weekly, monthly?" Then "this plant needs to be fertilized with _________ fertilizer in the spring. Add to calendar?" Then "this plant needs to be cut back harshly in the fall. Add to calendar?" Then "this plant should be mulched over in the fall. Add to calendar?" Then "this plant may need to be divided in the spring. Add to calendar?"
You get the idea. Ideally it would be by zone, so you wouldn't have certain tasks if you were in a much warmer climate. But at least the program would let you choose.
So then you'd have a monthly calendar with things to do for the month (divide these plants: salvia nemorosa, hosta....
fertilize these plants with a __________ fertillizer: salvia nemorosa, veronica speedwell), and then things to do daily or weekly. As a gardener who is still learning, it seems impossible to have to remember every single thing!
Still thinking about working on it??

I use the Garden Tracker software and love it. I've had it about 3 months. It's really labor intensive at first, but a truly joyful way for me to spend my time. I don't like that it cannot be downloaded....and as my techie geek husband says, "if it's too big to download, it ain't worth having." I also didn't like that as a netbook owner, it's not offered as a flash drive, tho to be fair, when I contacted the company, they gladly made a flash specifically for me. I should point out that I am not a directions-reader and the program was simple enough for me to poke around on and figure out. It holds tons of images, has to-dos, journals, and does reporting and packet printing. It has some cons -- everything does -- but I really like it a lot and am very satisfied.

Hi Trant and all!

I just came across this thread and I'm wondering how the website development for garden tracking is going! Looking forward to hearing about your progress,

jag