I have a half dozen cute little notebooks, all with the purpose of becoming a garden journal. This year, I'll finally keep good notes, I promise myself. I'll make entries about what I planted, when I planted it, how I thought the weather affected my garden, and what I did or didn't do about it, as well as which varieties worked best. But then life gets in the way, and after a few entries, the pages are blank. 

But you know what takes nearly zero time? Snapping pics with my phone. 

Why keep a garden journal?

Keeping a garden journal is a critical part of adapting your garden and your gardening, learning from previous seasons to make next year more successful. A garden journal is more than a notebook with a few things jotted down. It's a record you can refer back to year after year, building your localized gardening knowledge. When did the last frost occur? What variety of tomatoes did you plant last year? How many onions did you harvest from that 4'x4' bed? 

The answers can all be found in a good garden journal. Imagine having access to detailed data, tailored to your specific soil, weather, and preferences, all at your fingertips. That's what a good garden journal is designed to provide. And if you aren't the type to remember to jot things down, but you do usually have your smartphone in your pocket, you can learn to take detailed pictures to serve the same purpose.

What should you take pictures of?

Of course, we should take pictures of our garden and the things in it we want to remember, like the stunning color of a huge zinnia, or the row of tomato plants all with fruit ripening on the vine. But taking some extra photos can help to fill in the rest of the picture and provide a more complete record of our gardening season.

Seedlings

Sharing a picture of a seedling in early spring is exciting. It's a sign that gardening season is upon us. But snapping deliberate pics of a row of sweet corn or a tray of pepper seedlings can serve as a record of germination success or failure, as well as a timestamped journal entry. 

Two pictures, one of a newly planted tray or row with the appropriate label and another after the seeds have germinated, provide you with three data points: the day you planted the seeds, the time it took for them to germinate, and the germination success rate. You can do the same with transplants, taking a pic of when they were finally planted out in the garden.

Garden bed and crop arrangements

If you have more than a couple of garden beds, it can get a bit confusing over the span of a few growing seasons to keep track of what went where and when. Did I plant carrots or onions there last year? Two years ago, was this bed in squash, or were they over there? 

Snapping a few pictures from different angles can help when planning next year's garden. Crop rotation is much easier when you have a record of which plants were in what spot.

Successful plants and plant fails

By late winter, you might not remember which of the zucchini varieties you tried had the best production, or which squash plant got too large and took over the yard. You may have politely forgotten about the carrots that never amounted to anything, or the sunflowers that grew a foot tall and never flowered. Snap pics of both the successes and the failures. Show full harvest baskets, a squash on a scale to record the weight, or size comparisons between two cabbage varieties. The aster that never flowered? Take a picture of that, too.

Garden pests

Was it Septoria or early blight on my tomatoes last year? Perhaps you didn't quite figure it out then, but over the winter is the perfect time to revisit those images and compare them to the disease pages on university Extension sites, identifying what the problem was. Relying on memory when looking at diseases that appear similar can lead to misidentification and confusion. If you can look through a visual record of the plant diseases and pests you have had, buying resistant varieties this year will be easier. 

Photograph both affected and healthy plants for comparison. Including something for scale in disease photos (such as a coin or your hand) will help you better assess severity later.

Progress and growth throughout the season

Not your own personal growth here, but that of your plants. If you sometimes wonder, weren't my cosmos and snapdragons bigger by this time last year? A few pics taken monthly make it easier to recall. 

I often start to panic, thinking something is wrong, but looking back at an image from the past couple of years reassures me that, yes, the dahlias really were only a foot tall by this time. Take identical reference shots from the same vantage points monthly throughout the season to create a time-lapse effect. 

Perennial plant tags

Those little plastic tags that come with perennials contain the plant variety name, often the species, and other helpful information. We often stick those tags in the ground next to the plant, but after a year or more in the elements, they can become difficult to read or simply disappear. 

Snap a picture of the plant while you hold the tag next to it, and you won't have to try to remember what variety you planted later on. 

Pollinators

Got some native bees and other pollinators doing their thing out in your garden? Snap a picture. Not only are the images fun to look at later and share, but you'll also have proof of which plants (especially flowers) they were using at what week of the year.

After a year or two, you'll notice when the pollinators start to arrive in your garden, and you may find a few weeks where you don't seem to have much food for them. It makes the challenge of providing a food source throughout the entire growing season easier to track. 

Fruit set and flower bud opening

We have days-to-maturity estimates for our veggies, herbs, and flowers, but they are just that. Estimates. Our local conditions, including soil fertility, precipitation, temperatures, and amount of sunlight, all have an effect. 

Take a picture of the first flower buds or fruit set on each variety, and you'll be able to remember later, at seed-buying time, which ones were early, mid-season, or late. If a particular variety never quite matured before your frosts, or bolted early, you’ll be able to see that, too.

How to organize it all

Here's the tough part, but it's optional. If you don't mind searching through your images for the garden pics you need, then you can skip this part. However, if you take a zillion pics of other things, you may want to organize the garden journal images to make them easier to find later. Accumulated photos become useful only when they're findable.

Apps

Since it's already on your phone, you may find that a good garden journal app is the ticket to organizing your photos and maybe adding a note or two while you're at it. While not quite as convenient as simply opening the camera and ripping off a few pics, it's still pretty darn easy. 

Many gardening apps have a journal feature, or you can adapt a digital journal app for use in your garden. But it should be quick and easy, or you’ll skip it.

Create photo folders

Creating a folder or project in your digital photo app is a good way to sort images after you've taken them. Storing them all in one place means you won't have to scroll past hundreds of other pictures of the beach, your dog, soccer games, or grocery lists (am I the only one who snaps a picture of my grocery list?) to find when your tomatoes started to bloom. Create a subfolder for each year, and you're well on the way to having an organized, digital garden journal. 

If your phone doesn't back up photos to a cloud storage, you may wish to periodically do so, or upload them to a different device. Losing a season's documentation to a broken phone defeats the purpose of this simplified journaling method.