Brenda,
You might want to check out the "PlantStep Love" thread here in the Daylily forum. That way any questions you may ask the others who are using the program can help you with any problem you are having. I will do my best to help with any questions, and if it is something none of us know we can always contact Kent and try and find an answer!

Larry,

I've kept an Excel spreadsheet for a long time. I print out blank spreadsheets where I write in my "observations" and later in the season (whenever there's downtime) I type the information into the spreadsheet on the computer. I then print those pages out and carry the with me to make new notes as needed.

My columns are as follows for seedlings: Seedling number, parents, height, flower diameter, fragrance? Y/N, bud count, branching, foliage habit, description, bloom dates, special features, location, number of fans, rust resistance (if it is sadly pertinent)

For registered daylilies: Name (tets proceeded by *), height, diameter, foliage habit, description, bloom time as registered, bloom dates in my garden, special features, location, number of fans, comments, rust resistance

I have my seedlings in rows with the each cross on a tag where the row for that cross begins. When things start blooming, I take my spreadsheet (in 3 ring binder), pen, plastic tags, pencil to write on them, camera and flagging tape in 4 colors to indicate to myself if it's a tet keeper, dip keeper, non-keeper with an extra blue tape if I really love it. The colors also help me to quickly make crosses with daylilies of like ploidy.

I have to take complete notes on 300-400 newly blooming seedlings each year and revised notes on however many others I've carried over. I don't take many notes on the registered daylilies - only the ones that are fairly new to me and I don't have many of those each year.

In winter (like now), I try to put it all into PlantStep. I also use the hybridizing tool in PlantStep to help me prioritize which seeds I will plant first since I never get to them all.

I'm retired since forever and have a lot of time on my hands and gardening is all I really want to do so maybe this is too much for someone with a life, but I find this systems helps me keep track of things pretty well.

Thanks for starting this thread and topic, Larry. I too am plagued with the same time and labor limitations and overwhelming amount of data and seedlings. I will be following responses to this topic. I tried the notebook method and pretty much gave up on it because I did not have time to transfer that data onto the spreadsheet. I must find a way to skip this step in order to reduce the time spent on data entry. Has anyone tried entering data directly onto a tablet when you are on the field?

Wow, Pat! Thanks for sharing your method. There are many great ideas and tips that I will definitely use to improve on my recordkeeping!
'

@kousa,
Thanks so much for the reply and info! I posted a few questions about the use of plant step and how you use it over in the "PlantStep Love thread.

@kousa,
After reading over your post a few times, I am wondering why use PlantStep when you have all your information on your spreadsheets (on paper and in the computer)? I guess my question is: What purpose or what benefit is the PlantStep program not offered by the spreadsheets?

Seedfork said:@kousa,
After reading over your post a few times, I am wondering why use PlantStep when you have all your information on your spreadsheets (on paper and in the computer)? I guess my question is: What purpose or what benefit is the PlantStep program not offered by the spreadsheets?

I sell daylilies and PlantStep lets you put out a free catalog with photos that you can update yourself easily at any time. There are a few options of what you can "send" to the catalog. Seedlings, registered or all daylilies, of those you can choose from the subcategories including all, for sale and several other choices. It's easy to pop up all your seedlings for example to show to someone who wants to see for whatever reason, then change it back to a sale catalog once they've had a look.

Also, using the hybridizing tool lets me put up the two parents for a seed cross I've made and am evaluating. It brings up both daylilies with photos and statistics so I can more easily say if it's a cross I wanted to get planted first before I run out of room, a cross that can wait to see or a cross that's something I wonder why I ever made.

There are a lot of other features I have not taken advantage of yet but am thinking I need to learn about. I think there may be a page where I can put the information about how I acquired a daylily and what I paid and also a page to keep track of the people to whom I've sold.

Buy it once and never pay again for any of this.

All this being said ... I think I may be a wee bit obsessive about organizing things so I'm not saying all this is for you or everyone else.

p.s. In case the other information was helpful I forgot to say I also take out a retractable measuring tape. Also, I don't record all the information on the non-keepers. Just the seedling number and parents go on the plastic tag and I take a picture. This means I'm not noting ALL that information for so very many plants. The keepers end up in the Plantstep catalog with the registered daylilies - eventually.

I guess I (hopefully) answered all your PlantStep questions here. I'm not sure where the other thread is.

Reading your original question another thought is that I don't know how new you are to hybridizing but I do know I initially couldn't bear to part with almost anything and was very unsure what might be good or not good. Now I don't have to give nearly as much time to many of the seedlings, knowing quickly that they won't be kept. If you compost the non-keepers, you can break them over right away and not have to think about them again until you dig them up.

Thanks for those replies! I have so few seedlings that show the traits I am looking for that I have found it easier to mark the keepers than the non-keepers. Hoping this year will be better. I do use the Brought From and the Sold to pages, but my entries are just trades and sent for postage entries, no actual sales. Still, I really like the features, but they were not easy for me to catch on to how to use them. Once I did I really liked that it was easy to select a previous entry and all that info was saved and could be reselected.

Larry - I do think you have to be selective about how many cultivars and seedlings you track with stats. I have about 500 registered cultivars and about 120 seedlings. I definitely don't have time to keep stats on all of them.

As I walk the gardens each day of bloom season, I pay attention to the registered ones that seem to have a lot of buds or great branching, and toward the end of the season I count the buds and branches and record those in a notebook. Digital photographs that record the date taken help with determining the longest blooming cultivars in my garden. For all the earlies and most of the mids I take a photo of the first bloom. Those that are still blooming in July or September get a photo taken on the last bloom. That's how I know the longest bloomers. I also take photos of the clumps that have the most blooms, so I would equate that with most scapes.

Seedlings are a whole different ballgame. This year I started using Judy Davisson's method of seed recording. She uses spiral bound index cards (I bought mine at Walmart) and prints a picture of each seedling on the back of the card on top of the stats page. I'm recording this info on each selected seedling and promising first-year seedlings: bloom size, scape height, # of buds, # of branches, # of fans, rebloom, foliage type, fertility. The spirals only have 50 cards each, so I bought three of them to start with this year. They are small enough to stick in the pocket of gardening apron I wear with a pen.

I certainly like hearing ideas on how to be selective on records to keep.
Now reading some of the post on how people keep records and stats, It makes me think that I need to bring along an office to the garden to have the pens & pencils & markers, notebooks, rulers, cameras, flags, ribbons ,clipboards etc.
So does anyone have any favorite way of hauling all that stuff around with you, any portable desks?

Throw it all in your new garden cart!

I don't have Plantstep yet. I would like to get a database app that I can put it on a tablet. This way I can take it around my garden to take pics and input any data directly into the database app so I can cut the step of data entry. It takes too much time to manage and sort photos and data if I have to manually put the photos and enter the field notes with the right seedling record. Does anyone know of a good ipad app for this purpose?

Seedfork said:I certainly like hearing ideas on how to be selective on records to keep.
Now reading some of the post on how people keep records and stats, It makes me think that I need to bring along an office to the garden to have the pens & pencils & markers, notebooks, rulers, cameras, flags, ribbons ,clipboards etc.
So does anyone have any favorite way of hauling all that stuff around with you, any portable desks?

Larry, they must grow pencils and pieces of paper a lot bigger in Alabama. Must be the longer growing season. Here in Illinois they fit in our pockets.

Tim,
No, you just have bigger pockets than we do!

I guess that makes sense. We need them to have enough cash on hand for our enormous taxes and to pay off our crooked politicians.

I have used a 5-gallon bucket to carry supplies to the garden, but my Radio Flyer wagon works very well too, lol! I love my wagon!

Aww! Those little red wagons are darn useful...on Fire Island, where there aren't any roads, people bring them down to the boat dock to load up their groceries and supplies. Radio Flyers are sort of the unofficial mascot of FI. ( I usually spend up to a week there in early August...I know, I know, right in the middle of Daylily season!) But that was off topic.
Kousa ( Karen), I didn't know that a data base app was a thing! I would love to be able to get Plant step for my tablet. I'm also interested if anyone has explored this option?

This is a useful thread. Karen/Kousa. I'd be interested to hear more about picture management and devices, as I'm still sorting this out too. I got a Surface Go for my PlantStep as the program wasn't compatible with my Mac. Zoia, there are some instructive comments on devices on the PlantStep FB discussion, I think. It made my brain hurt a little. I love the Surface Go, but haven't fully utilized it yet as I'm so attached to my Mac. I just download pictures to both devices, and wish it was more integrated. Zoia, You may run into compatibility challenges with the IPad unless you are using a windows simulator (which seems to add an extra layer to the arrangement). You probably know this. I'm not sure- I speak daylily. fluently, but not tech!

I like PlantStep but wish I automatically captured a "starter" image of flowers when I first access the details of my registered cultivars. I have yet to add my own images. Still have to complete my plant list. It would help if I stopped digging the hole deeper by adding new plants! I have maybe 800 + cultivars (excluding seedlings) and thousands of images.
The setup is time-consuming, and is a lot to deal with, especially if one has big plans. I feel you, Larry/Seedfork! Let's put out Help Wanted signs: Quality clones, to do data management stuff. I wouldn't mind having a couple of clones to do heavy lifting, too. Tennessee clay may be nutritious but it can suck to work with! Have the big tractor but need a friendly little wagon... and a gardening apron like you have, Debra.

In 2021, my motto is to hold firm in the belief that what I wish to do, I WILL DO, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois. To "vasbyt!" (pronounced "fussbait), which means to persevere in Afrikaans, and my stepdad likes to instruct us to do this. And... I can let go of whatever. And ... I'm the boss of me, so I can change my mind if I want to. See how quickly it comes undone?

But our people still love us even if we don't get it all done in a timely fashion. And we can like ourselves even if things take longer than we would like. Now off I go to plant the 1500 or so daffodil bulbs that still need planting before they expire in the barn. They are trying to, but they can't live in the barn. Vasbyt, friends!

You go girl! I was just outside, seeing if the ground is too frozen to dig ( it's not!) and chatting with my neighbor Theresa about which daylilies she should plant...she wants me to pick them! Hah! That's like giving candy to a toddler...she just feels overwhelmed by the subject. Happy to help! So, for now, more coffee in and then " Vasbyt"! Let's see if I can make room for the 120 cultivars coming starting in April.

Well, the best laid plans...turns out my daughter is swinging by for lunch...so tomorrow, digging will happen!
BTW, checked with Plantstep and no, it won't run on an iPad...