Cataloguing plants

I am going to take a leaf out of Kristen's book and start cataloguing my plants and taking photos of them so I can watch their progress. I love looking at pictures I've taken in previous years and seeing how much they've grown (sad person that I am)

Do you catalogue your plants and if so, how? I'm thinking I'll take photos, record measurements, when they flower, what I've fed them that particular year, etc.

Anything else I should record?

If you catalogue your plants how do you do it/what and how do you record it?

 

Merle , I take photos of a lot of my plants during the season . I download them onto my PC and just catalogue in folders as "Garden 2011 Garden 2012 etc etc . The date stamp on the photo sorts them out fine . Make sure your time and date on your camera is set correctly !
For my garden I have a scheme plan of it on an Excel sheet . I note the plants name , location , and year of planting . This is very useful especially for Clematis so you can remember the name and type.
I keep another spreadsheet for my annuals . This is a planting plan which notes quantity , germination rate , pricking out time etc etc .
If you use Excel I can send you a copy, to use as an idea

 

Hi Harry

I do have an Excel file which has all the plants listed (with a generic pic of each) and whereabouts they are in the garden, with an additional tab for each type of shrub (roses, rhodos, etc). Never thought to add year of planting so will do that, thank you

Folder for each year sounds like a good idea too

Alex

 

I make notes of things that I look up when I buy a new plant and record them in my spreadsheet - to save me having to look them up again! Columns include:

Species
Variety
Description
Date (purchased)
Qty
Price
Seller
Height
Width
Sun/Shade
Moisture (e.g. "Dry OK once established")
Drainage (e.g. "Boggy", "WD", "VWD" (very well drained) etc)
Soil (e.g. "Poor", "Mod" (moderately fertile), "Fert", "Fert pH-", "Fert pH+", "Humus", etc)
Hardiness ("HH" (Half hardy", "FH" (Frost hardy), "H" (hardy), "Tend")
Flower (month)
Flower Colour
Foliage
AGM?
Location (in garden)
Cultivation notes
Winter Care (e.g. Before frost, after blackened, etc)
Reminders (date related)

I use shortcodes where possible (e.g. HH, FH, H, Tend) so that I can easily, and accurately, Sort & Filter the list.

The spreadsheet is to help me plan "Where" things will be planted, and then to remind me what their actual "Location" is. Plus any Care (particularly if they need Winterising).

I have 24 (12x2) "Reminder" columns, one for each half of the months. So I can put "Prune" in Early February column, or "Lily Beetle" in April, May and June , or "Flowers" in Late June. Just "one word" answers in these columns, just so I can cast my eye down the column for "Early May" now and see if anything has to be done. If more details are needed they can go in the Cultivation notes column.

I "store" Web images (to remind me what they look like when buying / until they flower) in www.Pinterest.com

I store "Location" in two columns for the nick-name of the bed they are in, plus the "yards" from one end (same end for each plant, eh?! I measure from the North, or East depending on the direction of the bed), so I can sort the list into Bed/Position order. I can then Sort & Print the spreadsheet to get a list of plant names in "walking order" along the bed. Helpful when labels are lost and I want to remember what variety a particular plant is (I figure i will know the species, so its just a question of recording the Variety)

I have 28 separate "beds", so its more than a handful of plants

Photographs I store in date order. My camera makes a separate folder on my PC for each date, so it makes a folder "2013_05_12". I rename these to "2013_05_12_Garden" or sometimes more detailed suffixes like "_GardenPond", or "_Greenhouse" (and "_ChildnameBirthday" etc.)

The individual image filenames are like "IMG_3940.JPG" and where they are of specific plants I rename them to "IMG_3940_AngelicaGigas.JPG". (When I take photographs I photograph the plant first, followed by the Label - especially if in a public garden / garden centre etc.). This way if I copy the file (e.g. to upload here, or to my Blog, or a friend) it retains the name of the subject. I can also just use the File search to find related pictures. There are plenty of image management tools that will allow Keywording of images etc. which will most probably suit folk better than my Techie solution.

 

I keep my notes in an old Cathedral Analysis book I had, really must work on spreadsheets, it sounds gloriously complicated.

 

Take me a age to do, but would be very useful , I do what ARMANDII does and keep all the labels together and refer back now and again.

Spruce

 

I have an app on my tablet called "Gardener". I just log everything alongside a pic on there.

 

It is!

Possible benefits (depending on how much Faff anyone fancies ...) are:

Planning for planting. Of course if you buy a plant that you have already decided on a place for you don't need any of that. I buy what I see that I like and then do my OMG dance as I try to work out where it might go! Part of that process, for me, is looking up soil etc. requirements, and whether the thing will need TLC during the winter. As websites differ in their opinions I record into my spreadsheet what I think the consensus might be suggesting

"A Record" - obviously Although I think my stories of "where I got it from" are causing me to become a crashing bore ... some people find some of them amusing (things I nicked from Here and There ) so I think I should stick to only mentioning those

Routine Care - month-by-month requirements

Plant Locations - sort the list into "walking order" as a crib-sheet.

 

Don`t we all, still trying to figure out where i am going to put my 12 Dahlias,

 

Checked the apps (I like apps) downloaded 2 "Gardener" and "Garden Manager" had a play and seem to like the latter better.

 

A "Piling" system perhaps?

 

Same as me, everything I plant has the label next to it, even though I know the majority it's very useful when stuff dies back and grows again come springtime.