Vintage Garden Journal

One growing season, start to finish, is what this 28-page printable garden journal records. It runs in the order a season does: plan the garden, sow it, watch it week by week, pick what comes up, then look back. The cover carries a 1640 engraving of a narcissus from Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis.

Before you plant

The first pages are for planning. A garden overview has space for your location, USDA zone, sun exposure, goals for the season and a sketch of the layout. A master plant list tracks each variety with boxes to check when it’s sown and when it comes up. Two planting schedule pages run from early spring in March through fall in October, followed by a month-by-month task page and a soil page for test results and a fertilizer schedule.

Eight weeks of observation

The middle of the journal is eight two-page weekly spreads, from early spring to late fall. Each day gets its own small card to mark the weather, whether you watered, whether you saw pests and what grew. Every week also has its own focus box that follows the season, starting with seedlings and germination, moving through transplanting, first pests and pollinators, and ending with first harvest and seed saving. Pages 8 and 9 can be printed as many extra times as you need, since the printing guide says a full spring-to-fall season usually needs about twenty weekly spreads.

After the harvest

The closing pages log pests and diseases with the treatment you tried, each harvest by amount and weight, a page for pasting photos or pressed leaves, a season review with a 1-to-10 rating, and a note to next year’s gardener.

Sizes and plant markers

For home printing, use the US Letter or A4 file. The zip holds the journal at a true 6 x 9 in page for a pocket book, and a second 6 x 9 in file with bleed and crop marks for a print shop. The bonus sheet has 24 plant markers to cut out, twelve blank and twelve already named for common crops like tomato, basil, lettuce and kale. Card stock or a laminating pouch helps them last the season.