Cards for now are stacked in a small container near my grow lights where I can leaf through them adding growth information as it happens.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I like to record everything. While this is largely a lot of fun, and mainly for my own interest, there is a practical need to keep yearly vegetable garden records. There is a mountain of information on vegetable gardening out there but even with only a few years under our belt we have learned that there is nothing more important than your own personal experiences. No two gardens or years are alike, there are just too many variables — soil, temperatures, rain, seed variety, even how much time I have to spend in the garden.

While a large piece of paper or notebook is probably the easiest way, this year I decided to make some decorative record cards for each variety we will be growing. For the front I used vintage seed packet images, there are a lot out there. I used Photoshop to edit the images adding the vegetable type and variety to each card. The back of each card contains key record categories including indoor sow date, germination information, outdoor planting date, harvest dates and room for notes.

The front of each vegetable record card has an easy to see large image, the back some record categories.

For now I keep the cards near my grow lights where I can record what is happening right away. I know that if I leave it until tomorrow I will be short notes for next year. During the garden season the plans are to leave them either in the garden house near my tools or better yet, if I can find a small waterproof container, outside right near the garden.

It was fun making the cards, giving me a little ‘taste’ of what is to come. Here’s hoping I am as diligent in recording my garden notes all season.