The Ultimate Printable Garden Planner + 12 Page Garden Planning Journal
Now is the perfect time to plan your dream garden! Whether you want to grow vegetables or flowers in your garden – you’ll love our free printable garden planner and garden panning journal! This 12-page garden planning journal will help you to organize your garden, keep an inventory of your seeds, and even track your harvest year after year!
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. – Audrey Hepburn
Planting a garden can not only be fulfilling but also provide fresh food (or dried flowers for tea!) for your family and pollinators!
Gardening can be fun for the whole family. It teaches children about the life cycle of plants, picky eaters are more likely to eat something they grew, and you have plenty of fruits and vegetables to share with your friends and family, as well as keeping your own pantry stocked.
At the bottom of this post is our free printable garden planning journal! Just open the link and print! You can also choose to print extra pages by increasing the copy number in your printer settings. That way you can extend your journal each year to keep track of your garden plots!
Why Use a Printable Garden Planner and Garden Planning Journal?
Maybe you’re asking yourself if you really need garden planning printables.
If you’ve never used a garden planning journal before you may wonder why to start one now! It’s very easy from year to year to forget how you made your garden so spectacular in the past.
Writing down where you’ve planted and how it turned out can provide many clues to continuing your success as a gardener. We can only remember so many things and having a planner and garden planning journal like this one will help you remember little details that might otherwise get lost.
This will be perfect as a vegetable garden planner for the new growing season.
What types of things should you record in a garden planning journal?
You can keep records of anything in your garden planning journal that you want to in regards to your garden, but if you’ve never used a garden planning journal below are some ideas of things that you can keep track of each year to help with your future garden plans.
- Freeze dates
- The expiration date of your seeds
- Germination Rates
- How many plants you planted
- Where you planted each species (for rotation purposes)
- Any fertilizers you used, amounts, and if they helped
- Pests and how you controlled them
- Diseases and how you controlled them
- Your watering schedule
- Your harvest abundance
- Tips for your next year’s gardening plan
You’ll also want to write down the companies you bought seeds from as well as the dates these seeds were purchased. Not all seeds will grow as expected. This is where having your garden planning journal is vital to the success of your garden year after year.
These tips you recorded in your garden planning journal will help you look back each year and maximize your success as a gardener! It’s difficult to remember every little detail about your garden so keeping records of what you’ve experienced in the past can help you keep making the best decisions about your garden moving forward.
If you want to go the extra mile you can include pictures of your garden like a scrapbook! This is optional but will make your gardening journal extra special for you. You can mod podge pictures that you print out on your home printer or send photos to your local photo shop to print.
How to Use Your Printable Garden Planner and Garden Planning Journal
1. Add your gardening journal into a 3-ring binder!
I highly recommend setting up a 3-ring binder for your garden planning journal! This will help you to stay organized and be able to look back on previous years’ notes as you plant your new garden. Print each page in our free journal set and place them in sheet protectors to ensure they don’t get wet or dirty throughout the year as you garden.
2. Use a pen for recording in your garden planning journal!
Over the years I have found that as I work through my garden planning journal that although pencil allows you to change what you have written, it also tends to fade with time. This can make it difficult to read as you garden in future years. If you mess up you can just re-print any page you need and start over! Use a pen so you can easily read what you have recorded from your past gardens!
3. Add extra blank pieces of paper in the pockets!
I love doodling and making tons of lists. Adding blank pieces of paper in the pockets will allow you to draft out your garden plots until you have come up with your final design! You can also draft a list of ideas and possible plants you are considering for your garden before acting on it!
4. There are no set rules! Do what works for you!
Our 12-page printable garden planning journal will help you begin a great start to planning and keeping track of your garden! But there are no rules! Everyone organizes things differently so find what works for you! You can keep it simple and use our free 12-page printable journal below or print extra pages, paste in photos, and even store seeds in sheet protectors in your journal binder!
How to Use the Garden Grid Layout
With the garden grid layout in the garden planning journal, you can:
- Keep track of shaded areas, if you have any
- Mark where you’ve planted what (this is easier to forget than you think!)
- Track damp areas in your yard
- Give each growing area a name so you can keep track
What Does a Garden Planning Journal Include?
This free printable gardening journal includes:
- 4 Graphing Plot Pages
- Seeds Master List
- 2 Garden Plot Lists
- 1 Monthly Planting Calendar
- 1 Seed (affiliate link) Starter Record List
- 1 Garden Harvest Record
- 1 Blank Notes Page
Download and print our free printable Garden Planner here!
Know Your Zone For The Best Planting Schedule
As someone who has lived in North Carolina, Colorado, and Florida, I can tell you firsthand that the planting season varies from zone to zone.
While we used to pick strawberries in North Carolina around May, it’s closer to December in Florida. Peaches were ready in Colorado in July, but that’s not the case in the Southeast portion of the United States.
Make sure to write your growing zone in your garden planning journal!
What is My Growing Zone?
Great question! You can find your growing zone here.
Additional Gardening Resources
Using sites like Farmer’s Almanac and Bonnie Plants can help you get a jump start on researching the plants you need and when to plant them based on what zone you live in. Use the easy USDA Plant Hardiness Map and put your zip code in to learn when the best time to garden is in your area.
