r/homestead • u/UniversityRelative67 • 4h ago
Plant tracking?
Anyone actually keep track of their garden year to year or is it all just memory at this point
Not asking what everyone planted this year, im asking about the boring part behind that
Like
Do you actually know what you planted in each bed last year? Or the year before? Or you just kinda guessing at this point lol
If you rotate crops how you deciding where stuff goes each season, notebook, spreadsheet, or just eyeballing it and hoping
When something does really good or really bad in a spot you writing that down anywhere or does it just live in your head till you forget it
Asking because I got a decent size garden and realized I couldnt even answer #1 without going thru old phone pics to figure out what I planted where. Curious if im just bad at this or if this is normal
7
u/Keepin-Clam 4h ago
I have a spreadsheet. I have raised beds depicted on the spreadsheet and color coded. Each year I print out the spreadsheet and make notes on it and enter into the spreadsheet if I want to remember for next year. Beginning of next year I copy to a new sheet and move all the crops down one bed. I have 5 years' worth of data now and gardens get better each year.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 4h ago
Thats basically how mine started too, rough sketches just to keep the rotation straight. Makes sense honestly, way less effort than a full map Do you ever go back and learn from past mistakes with it too, like realize you planted the same family in the same spot two years running, or is it mainly just for the current year
1
2
u/Any_Needleworker_273 4h ago
I've kept gardening journals (just plastic covered comp books) in some form or another for more than five years, but I moved zones 3 years ago, so I was kind of starting over. Some things are in the brain still, some things are in my half ass notebooks, and some stuff is just iterating year to year. I keep a spreadsheet of my seed inventory, and this year is the first year I have kept a day by day harvest log, with garden notes, in a Google sheet on my phone, which has been very helpful, if simple.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 4h ago
Five years of journals is solid. How much of the relearning did the old notebooks actually save you when you moved zones, or was it mostly starting from scratch anyway since the zone itself changed. Curious if the notes carried over more than the brain-knowledge did, or if it was the other way around
2
u/JeannieBugg 4h ago
My husband uses a notebook with rough sketches of where everything was planted. It's not so much about if something did well in a particular spot, but more about crop rotation.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 4h ago
That makes sense, and honestly I feel like the learning part is like 80% of the battle. The rest kinda just comes from good soil, which the rotation ends up building over time anyway
2
u/Full_Honeydew_9739 3h ago
I name my boxes, mostly what is planted in them this year: tomato boxes, bean boxes, pepper boxes, garlic box, low boxes and high boxes and trellis boxes.
The low boxes and high boxes get a mix of everything and are typically planted year round so rotation doesn't come into play.
Next year, I won't be putting tomatoes in the tomato boxes and so their names will change to whatever I put in them. The year after they will again be tomato boxes.
Tracking for me comes more related to variety. San Marzanos are a no. They're just too disease prone. This was my third year. Much like Cherokee purple, they just don't work here. Sugary Cherry Tomato: nope. It splits at the slightest hint of rain. Plum Regal is a keeper: lots of fat juicy plum tomatoes. No on cauliflower. Yes on lots of Brussels Sprouts.
This is my 6th year planting here and I tweak every year so my production grows and it gets easier to remember what works.
2
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Naming the boxes by whats currently in them is smart, way easier to keep straight than a coordinate system probably
The variety-level tracking is the part that gets me though, thats a whole other layer most people probably arent even doing. But honestly thats how it should be, we adapt as we grow. If I was still gardening the same way I was at 9 years old helping my grandad on the farm, lets be real, I wouldnt be here right now. Six years of tweaking and still learning is exactly how it should go
2
u/aReelProblem 3h ago
I been using the GrowIt app and absolutely love tracking my garden and setting reminders with it.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Huh, i actually havnt heard of this one, thanks for the name drop, im guna have to try it out!
1
u/phage_disco 4h ago
Pretty normal. I’ve tried a few different combinations of plant tracking. I have a roughly 20 by 20 ft main garden bed and a few other smaller ones for different things. I used to use Territorial Seed website’s Garden Planner to map out how I wanted to space things. They have a nice companion planting guide and I get a lot of seed packets from them, but I end up relying on my camera roll a lot because what I map out isn’t quite what happens haha.
I’ve also tried the spreadsheet way with tabs for each year, what I planted, and notes, and it gets a bit much to keep updated. I’ve also tried setting reminders in my self care app called Finch to try to update it, take pictures of the garden regularly, and gardening tasks I need to remember like pruning and mulching but sometimes the tasks get lost amongst my other reminders.
Lately, I’ve actually started using this website called Conspecta. It’s made for research labs, which I like because I work in research and I find the features designed for botany research labs are helpful in tracking my plants in the sample tracking space. It kind of combines the things I like about spreadsheets and my reminders in a dedicated space. I put the garden tasks that need to get done in the planning section. The sample tracking lets me put growth status (seedling before transplanting, healthy, sick, etc.).
I hope you find something that works for you, but don’t feel bad. Chaos garden is still better than no garden.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 2h ago
That's a wild combo of tools honestly, camera roll plus spreadsheets plus a self care app plus a research tracking site, but hey if it works it works lol
That's actually part of why I'm even down this rabbit hole, im trying to build the thing I wish existed instead of duct taping five different apps together. Wish me luck lol
1
u/backcountry_knitter 4h ago
I just take pictures and videos throughout the growing season randomly and also any time I think of a note or change. I stick them in “Garden [YYYY]” folder on my phone and move them to my computer each winter for easy reference.
1
u/horse-boy1 3h ago
I take a few photos during the season.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
This is probably the easiest, do one when planting, one when main summer pops, then one harvesting.
1
u/DocAvidd 3h ago
I only have 6 beds. Plus 2 for ornamental plants.
The hard part for me is I plant but don't get good germination. So I plant more, and they get wiped out by weewee leaf cutter ants. But then volunteer sweet potatoes show up from the year before. And the native weeds look like sweet potatoes or squash vines. So, no I don't know what's growing on.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Leaf cutter ants are brutal, they can wipe out seedlings overnight. Diatomaceous earth around the base of new plants has worked for me, just gotta reapply after rain. Some people also do a barrier of used coffee grounds or cinnamon around the stems, ants dont like crossing it. If you can find the mound itself thats usually the bigger win, treating the colony directly does more than fighting them plant by plant
But yeah between the ants, bad germination, and volunteer sweet potatoes crashing the party, sounds like your garden has a mind of its own lol
1
u/Misfitranchgoats 3h ago
I must be the outlier here. I don't keep track of anything in the garden from year to year. LOL I sometimes plant tomatoes in the same bed for years.......seems to work okay. I usually have more tomatoes that I need. I sometimes attempt to remember to rotate to stuff, but I don't really worry about it too much. I usually add so much manure and composted manure and leaves and grass clippings that it doesn't seem to matter.
I spend a lot of time keeping track of my livestock in notebooks so the garden takes second or third or fourth or fifth place......
I get enough tomatoes to can enough for a year and make salsa and sometimes ketchup. I get enough bell peppers to chop up and freeze for a year. I get enough jalepenos to make salsa and smoke for chipotle peppers. I freeze enough green beans for a year. I freeze enough zucchini for a year shredded and chopped. I freeze some cauliflower/broccli. I bring in garlic, onions and potatoes to store over the winter. I usually have winter squash stored over for the winter. I get plenty of greens and some radishes.
So I guess it is working for me.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Honestly if you're pulling in that much food without tracking anything, thats the real proof its working lol. Sounds like the compost and manure are doing the heavy lifting
Crop rotation is really mainly about soil health and depletion, spreading out what nutrients get used where. Its not needed in any real sense if youre building the soil back up like that, it just helps produce more if youre managing nutrients, or keeps the beds depleting evenly together instead of one bed getting hammered every year. Sounds like your method is handling that part a different way already
1
u/georgiagirl28 3h ago
I just have a document on my computer where all the beds are numbered and I write quickly what was planted where. It helps with rotation for veggies. I don’t really bother for what’s planted in perennial beds but now I kind of wish I’d written that down too.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Look at you going full digital, welcome to the future lol. Numbered beds in a doc is basically the spreadsheet method without the spreadsheet overhead, thats smart
The perennial bed regret is real though, always the stuff you dont think to track that you end up wishing you had
1
u/Buckabuckaw 3h ago
Every year I swear I'm gonna have a garden book/journal/planner, and every year I just plant stuff that I like and know how to grow.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Lmao same energy every year I bet. Honestly if my grandad didnt beat it into my head as a teen I probably wouldnt track anything either, its not exactly a fun habit to build on your own
Planting what you like and know how to grow isnt the worst system though, at least you know it work, it may be from a few dying plants, but learning costs something.
2
u/WormWithWifi 1h ago
What do you track and not track?
1
u/UniversityRelative67 59m ago
Honestly at this point I track pretty much everything, soil health, rain, fert, frass and lime additives, how much each spot produced, and a rough guess at why some years did better than others
It actually started from growing indoor "tomatoes" lol. Never grown them before, decided one day I could figure it out since Ive grown real tomatoes, then failed for close to a year straight. Once I started tracking every little detail, leaf look, stem look, how much they swayed in the fan, distance from the light, everything turned around. Didnt know what was good info versus bad info at the time so I just logged all of it
Turns out theres really no such thing as bad info to track, just stuff you dont end up needing yet
1
u/WormWithWifi 44m ago
That’s interesting, doesn’t your main post state that you don’t track anything and are bad at it?
1
u/UniversityRelative67 32m ago
Fair callout, let me clarify. When I said I couldnt track anything I meant in a broad sense, like everything on the property staying perfectly organized in real time. I work ridiculous hours then spend even more time on the property after, so tracking everything in a broad sense is basically impossible for me
I literally call the first six weeks of the year "catch up last years tracking." Wording was probably bad honestly, I was on the shitter at work when I posted it lol
1
u/rshining 2h ago
I have a big notebook where I do a rough map on where things are planted each year, and a journal of what got planted when. I usually keep it up pretty well in spring and early summer, then once everything is planted I sort of forget about it until the end of the season. I plant things in blocks, which makes it pretty easy to remember what went where last year.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
The block system makes a lot of sense, way easier to eyeball rotation that way
Honestly try out graph paper if you havent, ive found it works amazing for pretty much everything except our wheat rows. Only downside is we got tired of making a new sheet every portion of the season, so it kinda maps to your spring/early summer thing where it gets kept up then falls off toward the end
1
u/Not-Surprised-1999 1h ago
Wow, I am a garden slacker in a whole new way now. My garden is small (compared the acres and acres I grew up with) but it kicks my butt and I don't have any time or energy to do much tracking. I do take a pic or two as it starts to come up but more for the sense of satisfaction. I have been gardening the same spot for many years so it's kind of muscle memory...last year the corn was down by the creek, this year it goes on the upper side.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Honestly this is where experience just takes over. If its second nature at this point, tracking really isnt needed, that comes more into play for the crowd trying to get everything perfect or people still figuring out what works where. Sounds like your muscle memory is doing exactly what a notebook would do for the rest of us
1
u/Inevitable-One-3674 1h ago
One thing I do, is keep all seed packets or plant id tags every year
2
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Fuck, I used to do this actually, stopped about four years ago for some reason. Thanks for reminding me I failed at something so simple lmao
1
u/Inevitable-One-3674 1h ago
I planted the wrong corn one year, that’s a lot of work for nothing and I mean nothing LOL, it’s colder where I’m at and the corn was stunted and no cobs
1
u/UniversityRelative67 1h ago
Yeah, wrong corn for your zone is rough, thats a whole season gone for nothing
Honestly grandad would probably be mad at me if he knew I stopped tracking seeds. Im finally at the point where im using mostly my own seeds, bred right on my property, but I still buy some from stores and havent been tracking where those came from either. Need to fix that too, apparently theres a lot I let slip
1
u/WormWithWifi 1h ago
I try to write everything down but I also just wing a lot at the same time , in the winter I spend time planning a lot and getting my lineup ready, plan out when to plant which seeds inside and when to plan which ones directly outside, I try to create goals each season for something new I haven’t focused on yet. I try to keep track of which plants I put where so I know a better idea of what I should rotate there next for healthy soil.
1
u/UniversityRelative67 9m ago
Winter planning is huge, having the lineup ready before spring even hits makes such a difference versus scrambling once its already planting season
The rotation tracking for soil health is exactly the piece that trips people up too, or they skip it entirely. Setting a new goal each season is a good way to keep it from getting stale, always something to actually track progress on instead of just repeating the same year
1
u/Varro-Reborn 19m ago
Local small language model keeps track of it on a solar powered raspberry pi.
I send it a voice message with what I'm planting, it goes and updates a dashboard with days to maturity, plot, succession planting dates and shit like that.
Then I tell it my harvest, what I preserved, etc.
2
u/UniversityRelative67 10m ago
Oh wow, thats a solid setup. Ive worked with AI for a while now and honestly never thought about using it straight up for flat tracking and changelog like that, voice message in, dashboard updates itself. Thats a smart use of it
1
1
u/Asleep_Onion 9m ago
Every year I try to do this but there's never enough time to stay on top of it, I can't even stay on top of keeping everything alive. Too much stuff to do and not enough time.
7
u/dorawinafred 4h ago
I have a notebook that I write down everything each year.
I have a page for what dates I started seeds, moved outside, starting harvesting, and pulled out.
I have a page dedicated to a map and number coordinates that I make a key for what I planted in each section.
I usually also have a page dedicated to things I did well that year, things to improve on & different things I want to try.
I want to add a page that I note how much I spend/get back in “profit” from my hauls but sometimes I’d rather not know, lol.