Give the page one subject
Use one sheet for one variety in one location during one season. “Tomatoes” is a difficult record to compare later. “Roma tomatoes, east bed, spring 2026” tells you which planting the notes belong to. That name is an example, not a growing recommendation.
If you sow the same variety again a month later, start another sheet and add a sowing label such as “second sowing.” If the planting moves, keep its original identity and add the move to the dated notes. A few seedlings grown together can share a sheet; write down what the record covers.
The Iowa State University Extension guide to garden journaling recommends recording details such as planting locations, varieties, dates, harvest amounts and completed tasks. This sheet brings a small selection of those details together around a single planting. It is an original Yearbed template, not an Extension publication.
Keep plans separate from things that happened
The sheet has a small space for your plan and a separate table for actual dates. Put an intended transplant date in the plan. Write it in the actual-date table only after the move happens.
| What you know | How to record it |
|---|---|
| You sowed on April 12 | Write April 12, 2026 beside “Sown.” |
| You bought a seedling but do not know when it was sown | Write “unknown” for sowing. Keep the purchase in the notes and put a known transplant date in its own row. |
| You remember planting in early May | Write “early May 2026, approximate.” Keep the uncertainty visible. |
| The packet gives days to maturity | Put the packet wording in the plan or notes. It is not an observed harvest date. |
| You have not recorded the date yet | Leave it blank while you check, or write “not recorded.” A blank does not mean the event never happened. |
Use the same date style throughout the sheet and include the year. “May 6, 2026” remains readable if the page gets separated from its folder. The paper form has no required date and will not fill one in for you.
Write what you did, then what you noticed
Each journal row gives you a date, an action and an observation. Keeping the last two separate makes a note easier to interpret later. “Watered” describes your action. “Leaves still drooping that evening” describes an observation. Together they preserve more than “plant struggling.”
These are invented examples of record wording, not instructions to water or treat a plant:
| Date | Action | Observation or note |
|---|---|---|
| May 6, 2026 | Moved to east bed | Four seedlings moved together. |
| May 9, 2026 | Checked leaves | Small holes on two lower leaves; cause not identified. |
| May 10, 2026 | Watered by hand | Soil surface had felt dry before watering. |
Describe a suspected cause as a suspicion. A journal entry does not establish a pest diagnosis or prove that one change caused the next result. If you record weather, distinguish your own observation from a forecast or a nearby station reading.
There are five note rows on the sheet. Continue on another copy when they fill up; repeat the planting name and season at the top. If you reconstruct an entry later, note that it was written from memory and keep any uncertainty about the event date visible.
Record harvest amounts with their units
Write a date and an amount in each harvest row. Use “6 tomatoes,” “420 g” or “one small bowl,” depending on what you actually counted or measured. The last description is useful context, but it cannot be added to a weight total.
Keep comparable amounts together when you review the season. You can add 420 g and 380 g to get 800 g. Keep “6 tomatoes” separate unless you also weighed those tomatoes. Do not count the same picking twice because you recorded both its count and weight.
If you picked something but did not measure it, write “harvested; amount not recorded.” If you are certain the planting produced no harvest, record that at the end of the season. “No harvest,” “no harvest recorded” and “still growing” tell three different stories.
The sheet has four harvest rows. It does not calculate a total. A second sheet can continue the harvest log without squeezing several pickings into one unreadable line.
Leave a note for next season
At the bottom, record the outcome in your own words and one thing to repeat or change. “Keep this variety, but label the second sowing separately” is a usable next step. “Do better next year” gives you little to work with.
A planting that finished normally, was removed, or never produced a harvest still belongs in the journal. Write what you know without treating an incomplete record as a verdict on your gardening. Leave the result open while the planting is still growing.
For a fairer comparison next year, read the location, planting dates and notes alongside the harvest. A larger recorded amount alone does not tell you whether the variety performed better: the number of plants, growing time and completeness of your records may also differ.
Print it and keep it with your records
Use “Print blank garden journal” near the top of this page, or your browser’s Print command. The print layout contains the blank sheet, without the article or site navigation. Choose A4 or US Letter, portrait orientation and normal scale. Turn off browser headers and footers if they appear over the writing area. Choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog if you want a file first.
This is a handwriting template. The page has no online journal fields to save. Write the planting identity on each continuation sheet, and keep the pages together by season or bed — whichever matches how you look things up.
For trays and repeated sowings, use the seed-starting record template. It adds packet details, seed counts and dated emergence observations before a planting moves into the garden.
How this relates to Yearbed
Yearbed is a garden journal app organized around seasons, beds and plantings. Its journal includes planting notes, dated care logs and harvest entries with an optional free-text amount. The amount is a note you write; the app does not convert units or turn every entry into a weight total.
The paper sheet is independent. Its plan area, separate milestone dates and open-ended outcome notes should not be read as a list of editable app fields. Yearbed currently has no importer for these sheets or for CSV files, so using the template does not create or update an app record.
The template is available here now. See the Yearbed home page for app availability; no app purchase is needed to print it.