Comments on: Plant Bloom Record Keeping

By: Northern Shade

Northern Shade — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:04:44 +0000

Neils, I like your idea for the colour coded bloom chart, to help with visualizing the combinations. I am going to make one like it, but unfortunately mine won’t have as many columns. I keep trying to extend my garden season with more extra early and late flowering plants, but the Alberta winters curtail extending too far. If we get a warm spring, the earliest crocus and Galanthus can start towards the beginning of April, while the hardiest of bellflowers will last into October, if we don’t get an early snow. Lately I’ve been faking it a bit, with colourful evergreen leaves, like the Heuchera and Tiarella to extend the garden colour. Thanks for the great idea with the colour coded weeks.

By: Neils

Neils — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 03:01:31 +0000

Thanks, very much, for your excel-lent record of your garden plants. I am designing my garden (zone 5, southern interior of BC) and have been looking for a model to use to store promising possibilities and then to scrutinize for design decisions. Yours looks great!

I modified your bloom dates record. The MSWord table fills the width of an 8.5×11 sheet, in landscape orientation(appropriate, eh), with all information for a given plant on one line. The basic columns are one text character wide with four columns per month. Hence, my visual record is to the nearest week. My growing season begins in April and runs through October, so I have seven months (28 columns + namne + dates) I select the number of weeks (columns) the plant is in bloom and shade the selected cells in the same colour as the plant.

It was a bit fiddly setting up the template, but is easy to use. I would be happy to send you the template and to hear your thoughts about its use.

By: Northern Shade

Northern Shade — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:48:21 +0000

Kate, I love to organize the plant data, to keep track of all of the information. One recent idea, was to add a column to the spreadsheet about where I got the plant from, since some visitors ask for sources, and I don’t always remember them all.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:41:13 +0000

Great organization! You should be a citizen scientist (or phenologist) considering how you keep records. You might actually be interested in the GLOG feature on YourGardenShow.com – it a timeline and journal that lets gardeners keep track of what’s happening in their garden, and provides a visual timeline of entries.

By: Northern Shade

Northern Shade — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:50:41 +0000

Bek, the flax are very easy care and have a longer bloom time than many perennials. It’s fun to look over your garden records on the computer when you’re not actually mucking about in the soil.

By: bek

bek — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:30:11 +0000

Thank you for your visit. I really like the way you keep track of your spreadsheets. I am a quite disorganized person, but love wasting time on the computer. So that might actually be something I could do. That way I would even have a written record on what plants I actually have. I will give it a try next year.
I love your flax! I saw one in a botanical garden last month. Since then it’s on my wishlist.

By: Northern Shade

Northern Shade — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:41:31 +0000

Pomona, I like the quick visual of the bloom sequence on the table. It’s easy to see at a glance the peak bloom times, and the garden work horses that bloom over a long period.
I hope my plant list with pictures is helpful. I think it’s useful for people to post plant lists for their individual growing conditions and niche environments.

By: Pomona

Pomona — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:00:48 +0000

Thanks for the bloom-time chart. I keep rough records in my garden diary, but then that requires a) actually writing in my garden diary and b) looking up the last few years’ bloom time. I’ll see what luck I have with this method.

I do think it’s an excellent idea to keep a personal record, because not only do bloom times vary from year to year, they bloom from garden to garden and place to place, so a great combo recommended in a magazine or catalogue may just not be possible for my own garden.

Thanks for the shade-tolerance list, I might do one for my own warmer-climate garden (hot but semi-shady gardens have their own particularities, too).

By: Northern Shade

Northern Shade — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:56:46 +0000

Cinj, it’s reassuring when all of your plants survive the cold and start sprouting in the spring. I added http://northernshade.ca/plant-list/ as a reference to show what perennials and shrubs do well in a cold climate, especially the shade tolerant ones. It’s fun to read other gardeners’ plant lists and their opinions about them.

By: Cinj

Cinj — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:53:47 +0000

Wow, that is very organized. I like my gardens, but I don’t keep such records. I’m lucky if I keep the tags actually. All of the plants that I put in last year made it through the winter, so I am extremely pleased about that! I like the idea you have of posting plants that survived the winter in your garden, I just may have to borrow that idea from you!