I am renovating, both within and without (something I shall remind myself never to do again), and am vaguely overwhelmed. With respect to the garden, I wonder if there isn't some program out there, some spreadsheet or app or some such, that allows one to remain on top of each and every plant. Name and particulars, when and where purchased, when treated with what, when last fed, etc. Surely someone has come up with something?

Biggles

I'm an accountant and use spreadsheets constantly. So I had spreadsheets with all my garden information. I still "draw" any new beds on a spreadsheet and put the plant names in the squares.

Probably 10 years ago I moved to PlantStep Software. It's a database designed for plants. The iris and daylily areas are very robust, but there are sections to track just about anything you want. Over the years, my interest has shifted from roses, to daylilies to iris and I've been able to continue the use of the product. It lets me add pictures to plant records which can be difficult in a spreadsheet. There are updates about once a year and questions and ideas are very welcomed. I track purchases and location in the software.

Recently I read about Airtable. There is a free version and some people were exploring it as an option for creating their information in there.

Thank you very much! I shall pursue spit spot.

I use the Plant Database right here on this site, each entry has a "add this plant to your list' button. You can create categories like I have for certain types of plants (see my profile) and also add notes such as when and where purchased, where planted, when bloomed etc. You can also print them out.

Oh my! Definitely need to get with the program. Thank you for the alert, Sue.

The current spreadsheet software is more than adequate for documenting and tracking your plants. I find that specific database programs written for plants are usually not quite what I want.

I use google sheets. I have around 1600 active plants (alive). If you count the dead plants and wishlist plants, I have close to 4000. Google sheets is also internet friendly, so I have internet links (in the spreadsheet) to most of my plant photos on Flickr (~43,000 photos). I also have links to any plant photos that I posted to Facebook or NGA.

I have around 200 peonies, 200 daylilies, 150 conifers, 120 Iris, 60 tress, 50 Hydranges, 50 roses and etc...

I can quickly tell you how many plants of a specific species I have, how many I purchased in any give year, from a given breeder, tall or short, what color, which ones I have photoed this year (or need to be photographed), which ones are in the greenhouse ready to plant, which ones are on order, which ones need to be culled or moved, and so on.

When I take photos, I use the spreadsheet info to cut and paste metadata into the photo file. Then when I upload to Flickr, that info gets extracted and posted with my photo.

You can make your spreadsheet as simple or as complicated as you like.

Mein gott, Mr. Richards! I can only assume you in the biz. On the other hand, how could you be? Some of your plants have died . . . .

Oh, I see -- "Independent farming professional." Alrighty then. :)

Thank you.

Nobody can keep every plant alive. Gardening involves a lot of gambling.

I was being facetious.

Frank, you are so incredibly organized it kind of makes my head spin!

OK, sorry, I missed it.

I used to have a spreadsheet too but the plant list on this site fills my needs as far as I want to track things currently. My selection is wide, not deep. I don't have more than 1 kind of most plants. Most of my time spent organizing is filing pics away in a cloud. Tracking the growth of a single plant over decades is fun that way.

Biggles said:Mein gott, Mr. Richards! I can only assume you in the biz. On the other hand, how could you be? Some of your plants have died . . . .

Oh, I see -- "Independent farming professional." Alrighty then. :)

Thank you.

Retired engineer from Ford Motor Company. Many of my plants have died (their choice) and many have been culled (my choice). After working at Ford Motor Company for 37 years, I am brutal!

"their choice" LOL! 2 thumbs!

Oh yes, I used to track when I mowed the grass. But it was too stressful. I could see the countdown to my next mow! I removed that feature from my spreadsheet and went one step further and stopped mowing:)

Wow, Mr. Richards. I have perused but twenty pages of your Flickr collection and am exhausted. You don't see to all this yourself, do you? If you do, surely you will always be young. Passion and exercise and a pup -- well done. I must say, of all: peonies. SO beautiful.

As for mowing, not gonna do it. So, I think, what of faux grass, peppered with flagstone? I am active in humane rescue and that stuff is impervious so why not? $25/square foot is why not. In the end then shall I likely go with gravel, as I note you have done here and there.

How in the world do you manage weeds with so many beds?

I actually walk the backyard everyday, so I keep it mowed. Riding mower and it does not take too long. I only walk the front yard near the house by the gardens, so I only mow that part. I have let a good portion grow tall.

Yes, I maintain all the gardens. I do spend a lot of time weeding.

Calif_Sue said:I use the Plant Database right here on this site, each entry has a "add this plant to your list' button. You can create categories like I have for certain types of plants (see my profile) and also add notes such as when and where purchased, where planted, when bloomed etc. You can also print them out.

I use this feature too and find it is mostly sufficient to meet my needs. The only thing I wish we had the ability to do is to include the photo of the plant when printing out our lists. (I keep a notebook with those lists along with the layouts of my garden beds that I created in Visio.) In order to include the photos I have to do a screenshot of my lists and that is more time-consuming. I used to do programming so it shouldn't be hard to modify the database to allow the photos to be included in our downloaded lists.

Maybe I need to speak to the manager.
Signed, Karen

I've found that making sublists for my plant list on this site helps me organize in the way columns would in a spreadsheet. They are my to-do lists, my memory about various things, priceless!

FrankRichards13- is it complicated to explain how you cut and paste metadata to a photo?

@NorfolkLiz

First step is to put metadata in the photo file. I have used Adobe Bridge, Photo Mechanic and Adobe Lightroom to do this. Currently, I cut from my spreadsheet and paste into Photo Mechanic.

In my spreadsheet, I have one cell per plant entry that provides a text summary of the plant. This is the info that I cut and paste.

It's actually not very complicated once you do it. When you upload a photo to Flickr, all the metadata is extracted and displayed with the photo, like the description, title and so on.

if you have specific questions, I will be happy to try to answer.