Garden Notes

Garden Notes
Published at Cico Books

About the Notebook

Are you planning on starting your first vegetable garden, or a veteran vegetable grower? Whether you're looking for a place to plan your plot layout and crop rotations or somewhere to record the results of experimenting with different seed types or varieties, Garden Notes is here to facilitate your every need. With a specially designed seasonal growing diary for planning out your year of planting, tending and harvesting your crops, and blank pages for sketching new plot configurations or scratching down ideas, this journal will fast become an invaluable companion in the garden. Also included is helpful advice on planning a vegetable patch, where to plant and when, and a 12-month planner – all the bits and pieces that will make you the most organized gardener on the block!

My Thoughts

Gardening is something we would like to do more.   Right now, our backyard is not prepared for such an activity.  I would love to start this year but I don’t think it will happen.   However, I know that my husband is also interested in becoming a bit more self-sufficient with a veggie garden.   

So when I saw this Garden Notes I was curious to see how someone can use a notebook to keep track of their garden plans. Illustrated with vintage images of seed packs and drawing of vegetables and flowers this cute notebook will make your gardening dream a reality.   The book starts with the plot information which help you to note the location, dimensions, soil type and direction of the sun.   You even have some special sheets of paper to plan the plot – what will you plant where kind of thing. 

Chapter two will make you dig into the planting pages – flowers, trees and shrubs, herbs, fruit as well as vegetables.   You have all the pages necessary to jolt down the information about them.

Flowers: Keep track of your annuals, perennials and bulbs with the name, variety planted, seeds sown, germination period, seedling planted out, location and more

Trees and Shrubs: What kind of tree/shrub have you planted lately?   Keep track of it with this notebook.  You can store the name, variety planted, date planted, pruning and more.

Herbs: In this section you can track the name, variety planted, seeds sown, germination period, seedling planted out.   I suspect that we will use this section more because we love having herbs.    We are eyeing cilantro as one of the main herbs we would like to have this year.

Fruit: Oh!  I so wish I would have enough space in my backyard to plant a fruit tree.   This section will help you keep track of the fruit name, variety planted, pruning and harvest.

Vegetables: Root vegetables, legumes, brassicas, salad leaves, onions, and other vegetables are covered in this section.  Once again, you can track their name, variety planted, seeds sown, germination period, seedling planted out and harvest.

Finally, there is a weekly diary for the whole year where you can jolt down anything about your garden – invading insects, birds that came to visit, what you did to protect the garden. 

Also included in this notebook, you have a Keeping Organized section which allows you to write down the visits you have done to other gardens, an address book of the places where you can purchase plants,  and a section to write down the useful gardening websites you have found on the internet.   They even included a plastic sleeve to insert the seed pouches you want to keep.

Garden Notes is probably a great tool for a gardener.    You would have everything under one book.   If you know someone who loves to garden, think  how useful this book might be for him/her.    Wouldn’t it be a great gift for that person?  Though I doubt we will build a garden this year for specific reasons, I am keeping this book close by because when the times come I will be ready for our first year of gardening!

Garden Notes can be found everywhere where you can buy journals and notebooks.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book for review purposes from Thomas Allen. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.