I decided I won't do a planner. Certainly not by hand. I have a hard time writing after two broken wrists, a ruptured thumb tendon (extensor pollicis longus), and the two numb fingertips. The fine motor skills are not so good.

I'll just try to continue with my OneNote Journaling, but now have added a Planning section for it that should work fine, and keep up with the spreadsheet/s. I know a writing planner i only as good as the person doing it. . . . and I know how that works for me after many many many failures through the years. At least with One Note, I can also incorporate photos into the mix.

I don't write anything down. I did journaling long ago---in the 1980s I had a nice, real garden journal bound in green leather. I think it was a 5-year journal. It was all downhill after that. For a few years I kept notes in a spiral notebook, then eventually, I just jotted brief notes on a calendar. Now, I make my grow lists and that's the extent of my planning or notes. I keep it all in my head and it works for our little family garden. I imagine if I had Kim's new job, I'd have a lot of stuff planned out and tracked on paper.

As y'all can tell, record-keeping of any sort is not my thing---I don't make many lists--just the bare-boned grow lists. I don't do diagrams, I don't do photos, and I just live in the moment each and every day. When I start planting, I just try to remember to save space for everything on the grow list and, once everything 'official' is planted, I tuck herbs and flowers into any leftover spaces. I used to make maps of plant flats, showing what was planted in each cell of a flat in case the cats started moving plants around, but the last couple of years I haven't even done that. If the cats mess up the seedlings or pull out the labels, I guess I'll just plant whatever survives and figure out what varieties are what sometime before or during harvest time.

I hope y'all enjoy your journals and notes and stuff, but I have declared myself free of all that, and I'm happier because of it. Making diagrams, lists, plans and notes always made me feel like I had to follow them and that surely did cramp my style. I like having the freedom to decide what I am going to plant in which spot at the moment I walk into the garden with a flat of plants or a packet of seeds in my hands. Maybe its just because I've gardened here in the location for almost 20 years now, so I know what works here in this specific spot as well as what does not work.

I have found that the more relaxed, casual and laid-back I am about the garden, the happier I am, so I've given up trying to maintain any sort of organization of any kind. Of course, if Tim were a gardener, this would drive him crazy because he is a Type A personality. Thankfully, I'm not. In fact, I've gone way overboard in the opposite direction....if I get any more relaxed about the garden, planting day will consist of me mixing together all the seeds of all the things I'm going to grow, then throwing them up randomly into the air and letting them grow wherever they fall. Come to think of it, that sort of thing could be interesting. (grin) I try to enjoy the process without making myself think I am working a job with rigid plans, schedules, deadlines, etc. It keeps me happier to meander along without any real grand plan....so, if I decide to plant a double-flowered purple datura right in the middle of a row of pepper plants I will (I did that last year) and the world doesn't end.

One reason that I stopped keeping notes is that I always misplaced them and couldn't find them when I wanted them and then, when that happened, I discovered I really didn't need them as much as I thought I did. That was a nice revelation, so I just stopped keeping notes. I'm not suggesting y'all should stop journaling, keeping notes, making lists, etc....just saying that it is what works for me. Everyone should do what makes them happy and what works for them.

I like the laid back approach to gardening too...and I've only been doing it for a short time. And my garden isn't really built yet. At one time in my life I could keep everything in my head. I forget stuff now. My journal won't be so much about gardening, it will be about my life. When is OMEA, when is Kindergarten graduation, when is *that* meeting and *this* meeting, when is my intern going on Spring Break, when am *I* going on Spring Break, when does Ethan work, when do I pay my bills, when do I pay Ethan's trombone teacher, when are the animals due for vet appts., when do the vehicles go in for oil changes, when do we all go to the dentist when is Kindergarten zoo trip, when does Ethan take the ACT?...

Keeping track of all of that will help me SO much when it comes to planning time to knock items off my to-do list, as well as when I can work in time for the garden. Honestly, if I was mostly home, things wouldn't need to be planned so much. It will also help me prioritize things in my life. Like I told Kim, I'm tired SO tired of flopping around through life. 2017 was total flopping through life.

I think it's great that everyone does their own thing--journaling or no journaling. You do YOU.

I'm definitely with Dawn on the journaling. I've always hated doing it. I need to be free to change my mind however many times I feel like it. (That becomes a problem with seed starting.) My problem is that I don't have anywhere near Dawn's experience gardening, and this year my garden looked like it. The main thing I need to remember is relative height of plants - what goes in the back, in the middle, and at the front. That will put me one step ahead.

Haha, Rebecca--oh yeah, me too regarding following plans. I do not follow A plan. I kind of follow a kind of plan! With eating, with gardening, with whatever I do. I DO like to record what kind of results I've had in gardens from year to year and what the weather was like.

I started with many kinds of gardening journal/art journaling/quilt journaling/personal journaling before. I have kept periodic personal journals. I love attempting it. One of these days I should gather those all hand-written ones up and send them to my son and let the chips fall where they will for Evyn and Westie to sort out. Poems, religion, random and so forth. Memories of my parents and grandparents, the old days, memories of Evyn and Westie when they were little. Probably none would mean anything to anyone, but I'd choose to let all them decide which to keep, which to throw away.

Thing with the gardening spreadsheet now, is just to sort of keep all the information contained. Who needs stratifying, who does great planted in early fall, which ones I will never try again down here, so far, the winners, ones I need to try on my must try list, and so forth. S'all good!

Exactly HH. That's what makes us all so awesome. I get to do me and yall do you. However I have always been a planner calendar person. I love to write upcoming stuff down so it frees my head. The last few years being in the camper I have not utilized any personal planner only for the garden. And I believe personally it has affected me in a negative way. The iBloom life and business planner has room to put my personal and garden notes all in one organized book. It also has space for me to keep track of certain personal goals. When I was the most happy and successful is when I kept up with my planner /journal. It works for me. I don't do well with free styling lol and probably wouldn't even if if I were retired. I just have that type personality.

With the garden I always use paper even if I start on the computer with spreadsheets etc I usually transfer to paper.

My garden journal mostly consists of when I can plant, when I actually did and when stuff happened. Since I am new to all this it comes in handy to look at my calendar and know this is the best week to do _____.

This year's garden books since I am working for someone else will be a bit more intense to put it mildly. But I think I will enjoy looking at what works and what didn't and all that at the end of the year.

Jennifer, When I worked full-time, I had to have a book-sized Day-Timer planner with 2 pages for each calendar day, and a week-at-a-glance page, and a month-at-a-glance page, copious notes on every day so I wouldn't forget scheduled appointments, Chris' activities at school and also in after-school stuff like his Cub Scout group, etc. I never would have survived without it. That was the same time frame when I had the beautiful leather-bound garden journal where I jotted down everything I could in the space available. Back then it was essential, and I can see how similar list-making, calendar notes and journaling areessential for you now. I sort of miss those days, but then I realize how much more care-free my life is nowadays, and I don't miss the old days at all.

Nancy, Making lists works for me when it comes to grocery shopping. I have a tendency to take off to the store without the lists (ha ha) but just the act of making the lists makes me remember what I needed to get. I always wonder why I make a list I'm going to forget to take with me, but I do think the act of writing out what I need to get does make it stick in my mind even without having the physical list in my hand.

Rebecca, I find plant heights relative to the weather in some years and try not to sweat them too much. Sometimes certain plant varieties get taller (or stay shorter) than expected, so I take plant heights as estimates not, not as something engraved in stone. So, if I mess up and put a taller flower, like one of the zinnias, on the south side of the peppers, I just declare that surely the peppers need the shade the zinnias will give them in late summer and don't beat myself up over it. Most years it works out fine even if I have a taller thing of one kind shading a shorter thing of another kind. Sometimes it looks planned as if I meant to deliberately shade the shorter plant, but truthfully, it usually means I thought I planted a zinnia that gets 6" tall on the south side of a row of peppers but instead I planted a zinnia that gets 30" tall. (grin) The world doesn't end and we all survive. The nice thing about containers is you can spin them around (or get the handyman to do it) to suddenly move the taller plant to the north side instead of the south side. At times I wish my whole garden was in containers for just that reason.

Kim, What I have learned from many years of gardening, including when I did keep journals, calendar notes and so forth, is that our weather varies so much in my specific location that keeping notes from year to year didn't help me much as far as knowing when to plant and when to expect a harvest. Was 2012 going to be like 2011? like 2005? like 2001? Or, none of the above? (It probably was most like 2002 or 2004, but warmer than 2004, but I couldn't figure that out at planting time---only when looking back much later in the year.) So, each year I just watch the air temperatures, the soil temperatures, and the forecast and try to figure out when it is safe to plant. It basically is a guess, though, because of the strongly inconsistent nature of our springtime weather.

It is crazy that some years I can put tomato plants in the ground the first week of March with little fear of them freezing, and other years I am having to plant them late in April and still cover them up in May. There's just no way to guess what the weather will do in any given year here because it varies wildly from one year to the next and there's no rhyme or reason to it. I wish I could say I've seen specific patterns and learned how to adjust planting dates and times accordingly, but honestly what I've learned is that anything can and will happen and you cannot predict it. I wish we had more consistent weather, but we just don't. I see plenty of people around me who just wait and plant their whole garden in May, which makes no sense to me for cool-season crops, but I guess they've waited and waited for the weather to settle down, and in May it finally does.

Everyone has to find what works for them. For myself, I think I've found it, so I'll keep on not keeping notes and making plans until my mind leaves me and I have to give up gardening altogether, which hopefully is still a long way off.

Dawn

There's always erasable pencils, Rebecca! That's what I will use. I like "plans" but I also like an "out" too. I am goal oriented though. I really like completing projects. It feels so good.

It is good to make a shopping list, although normally I keep it on my phone. Even then, I'll forget something.

My planner and calendar are supposed to be here on Wednesday which is my first day back to work.

I hope I'm like you one day, Dawn. My preferred way to "be", is to wake up and get a "feel" on what I should do that day...I really like using intuition as my director. However, I can't see being able to quit work anytime soon. Tom and I always joke that "we'll work till Jesus comes". That's an old church song. I can hear it in my mind--the Oklahoma twang that my childhood congregation put on the song.

HJ, I keep my grocery/errand list on my phone, too. I delete each item as I do it.

I'm with Tim on this one...A fail to plan is a plan to fail. Besides, what else is there to do when it's -10 outside?

I garden intuitively as well and am happier for it. Back when I tried to plan things out foot by foot (and inch by inch), I then put a lot of pressure on myself to follow the plan exactly and learned that being that goal-oriented can take the fun out of gardening for me. Everyone has to follow their own path. I guess when I am out in the garden, I adopt a bohemian style (and I'd never be happy in a boho-decorated house, which I find interesting).

Now, this is why my asparagus annoys me. I like to have haphazard garden beds that are a riotous mixture of veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers--a crazy quilt of a garden. I love it all mixed together and have found that growing that way, instead of growing in rigid little soldier-like lines of plants, seems to give me better production and less insect/disease issues. Plus, I just like the way it looks. The asparagus, being planted in two little rows side by side looks like the perfect garden bed, and totally different from the rest of my garden. It looks like it doesn't belong....you know the song "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong". The neat tidy rows of asparagus just do not belong in my garden. I should have planted them in jagged lines or circles or something. The comfrey is trying to fix this shortcoming by moving into the asparagus bed and taking over, which has been going on for several years now, and the asparagus has retaliated by somehow throwing seeds over into the comfrey patch, where we now have a couple of renegade asparagus plants. With enough time, I think someday the asparagus plants and comfrey plants will have their own crazy quilt design doing on---totally unplanned by me, but apparently planned by Mother Nature.

haha, Dawn. What WERE you thinking, planting them in straight rows!

Some things I have to have orderly. Like grocery lists, spreadsheets for seed inventory, and things I have to do and when. I like having it on paper to look at and look forward to. I always have. I am trying to work on my planner now but my mind is wandering too much. I will focus better tomorrow. Home alone :)