If you want to maximize every inch of your garden this year then you need to learn how to make a gardening binder or planner. It’s my #1 gardening hack for seed planning, maximizing yields, organizing a small vegetable garden spaces, planning successive harvests & all the tasks associated with a tidy garden.
Does any of this describe YOU?
Are you starting your first vegetable garden and need a step by step plan to get it organized?
Are you an experienced gardener whose ready to design your BEST garden ever?
Do you have a small gardening space and want to maximize every inch?
Are you looking for gardening binder printables and template ideas? Or….
You need a ready to print garden planner ASAP?
Well, you’re in the right place! This week we’re going to show you how to make your own gardening binder or planner and organize every aspect of your garden. You’ll be able to plan a garden of any size, maximize yields & keep up with all the garden related tasks from spring to fall.
We’re also giving away FREE printable garden list|note making planner stickers for use with your new gardening binder!
Our FREE printable garden planner stickers are designed to stylishly keep track of all the important gardening tasks on a daily or weekly basis.
Check out how our stickers look with our own DIY gardening binder!
Our FREE printable gardening planner stickers are intended for use with your personal planner or calendar. Print these stickers out on sticker paper and place in the margins of your personal planner or calendar to help make a plan for daily or weekly gardening activities.
Like most people I had a pretty disorganized system for organizing my flower and vegetable garden every year. My vegetable garden went together pretty haphazardly every year.
The problems I needed to solve were numerous, to say the least!
I had no seed inventory and ended up buying more seed than I needed. I also had no idea how old some of my seeds were as some were harvested by me or given to me by fellow gardeners.
I have a limited gardening space (raised bed garden) and I really wasn’t sitting down and laying out my garden every year down to the square foot level. Which usually meant that I created WAY to many seedling starts every year.
I also wasn’t making good use of vegetable pairing and some plants quickly grow to shadow over others which deprived them of sunlight and well…those living in the shadows didn’t make it.
I don’t know about you but my week is busy, stressful and I was losing track of which day I watered, when I fertilized & when I last cultivated. Some things need more water and attention than others and I was completely losing track of what needed to be watered and when.
I wasn’t sure what was doing really well in the garden and what wasn’t because I hadn’t tracked any yields. I was basically working off of memory (which isn’t that good for me any way).
I was thinking there had to be a better way. After weeks of brainstorming on how best to organize a gardening binder…I do think I found the best way to get your flower or vegetable garden performing at it’s very best…AND a way to do it with some style.
We’re going to show you how to organize your vegetable or flower gardening binder so you’ll have your most productive garden yet! Not only that….you’ll also be able to come back to this binder next year and know at a glance what worked and what didn’t. You’ll be learning, growing and improving as a gardener.
This knowledge alone will make the next year…and the NEXT year’s garden EVEN more successful!
I’m going to show you how I completely organized my garden plan in a binder and if you like what I made you can purchase & instantly download all the files that I created (14 total pages) which I call the Country Gardening Printable Binder (use reader discount code LETSGARDEN for 20% off) for your own completely organized gardening binder.
Even if you don’t like how I organized my gardening binder (or my design work) that’s okay…you can still download our FREE printable gardening planner stickers!
Coming up, I’ve put together a short tour of everything I designed/created to put into my gardening binder. I worked from hand drawn templates in the past that I had to create over and over again each year. I knew I was going to need several template pages to totally organize my vegetable and flower garden better than I had in the past by hand.
If you plan on making your own binder templates, I think you’ll at least want to borrow some ideas from me. I’ve tested out this binder over two growing seasons and I know it works!
I really love how this entire project came together and I’m really excited to show you how you can get your garden organized step by step with some really helpful templates.
1. Make Your Garden Layout on Grid Paper
The first and most important step is laying out your garden plan on grid paper. I personally plan each of my raised beds on a separate piece of grid paper. I like to divide up each raised bed on a square foot level. Using grid paper & a proper square foot scale ensures that I get the spacing right for seedlings that require lots of space to grow (like squash & pumpkins) and I don’t give too much space for small things like strawberries.
2. Make a Seed Inventory of What You Have
Unless this is your first year gardening, the next thing you’ll want to do is create a seed inventory and see what you have on hand. See how old your seeds are & record that down on paper. Make a list of what you have in stock. Most seeds will be effective for two growing seasons. For my seed inventory I recorded seed variety, quantity, year it was packed and the year it will expire. I also added a notes section.
3. Make a List of the Seeds or Starts You Need
Now that you have a plan for everything you want to grow this year and you’ve taken an inventory of what you have on hand leftover from last year…you can start making a shopping list for the seeds and starts that you need this year. For my seed planning template I made a column for seed variety, distributer (the store or website you order from), cost, quantity and a little hearth to fill in when my order has arrived.
4. Track Your Seedlings & Plantings
You’ll want to have some way to track the progress of your seedlings and plantings…like a planting/seedling tracker. If you have a decent size garden (or a long growing season) and will be doing successive plantings…this is also great tool.
It allows you to either keep track of what you’re seeding, planting OR make a plan (with future dates attached) on when you should plant your seeds/seedlings. This will ensure that you get those suckers started on time! Those of us with a very short growing season really have to pay attention to when we sow indoors and when we plant outdoors. If we plant too late then we may end up with nothing to show for!
For my planting/seeding tracker I made colums for seed variety, seeded date, germination date, plant date & notes.
5. Track Garden Tasks With a Habit Tracker
The little tasks required to keep up your garden once it is planted can be tough to keep up with. I often times find myself forgetting when I watered my tomatoes last, when I last fertilized or cultivated….did I water my seedlings in the greenhouse yesterday. Stuff like that!
If you use a simple habit tracker like we’ve created you’ll never lose sight of what you’ve done and what needs to be done in the garden.
The monthly garden habit tracker we created can track up to 18 tasks over 31 days (and you can print multiple pages if needed to track more). You can use a highlight, map pencils or a simple “x” in the box to show that you’ve completed the task on that particular day,
5. Track Garden Yields With a Yield Tracker
This is my FAVORITE component of my gardening binder. It’s the yields tracker! All that hard work in the garden gets recorded here! You can make a list of all the items you are growing in your veggie garden and when you make a harvest you can record the yield in the box of the corresponding day.
This template is also super helpful because you can figure out growing peaks for each variety. You’ll also know if you planted too much or too little when you’re making your garden plan next year.
6. Plan Ahead With Weekly/Monthly Planners
Some think that gardening is just a fun summertime hobby…but if you’re a serious gardener then you know that there are months of winter preparation that go into planning, getting your seeds started in the greenhouse & preparing the soil. There are a lot of repetitive tasks that require good timing like planting your starts/seedlings outdoors, regular fertilizing & pest control to name a few.
I’ve found that the best way to get a handle on all that needs to be done over the entire year is to create a workable plan in advance. A plan that divides these tasks up by week and by month. Something that gives you a global view of what needs to be accomplished and when it must be accomplished by.
7. Make a Pretty Binder Cover!
Among the files I created for my gardening binder were 3 different binder covers that I could alternate through over the years. I’ve included several options with our Country Gardening Printable Binder (use reader discount code LETSGARDEN for 20% off).
|How to Resize Full Size Sheet Printables|
I know there will be many of my regular readers wondering how they can resize our full size gardening binder printables (or something they create themselves) for their personal planners (like the Happy Planner or Erin Condren planners) which can range in size based on manufacturer.
You can using THIS print resizing guide (this is also a pin on Pinterest that you can save for later reference). This resizing guide contains a list of the most popular personal planners and the shrink percentage. You’ll need to shrink your printout by applying the suggested percentage in the print settings menu of your printer software.
|How to Organize Your Gardening Binder|
You can purchase these super cute, PINK binder tab dividers over at Amazon if you want to divide up your garden binder to be more organized (and be matchy-matchy). I put all of my pages into a 3 inch white binder (which also can be found at Amazon). Larger binders can often last you multiple seasons & store lots of pages.
When the gardening season is completely over I like to add page numbers for additional organization. This helps me replace a page that I might have removed so it goes back into the same spot. I’m always referencing old garden binders from years past to plan my next year’s garden…so I’m often removing pages.
My first garden binder eventually became stained with water & dirty finger prints from the garden. In order to preserve all this hard work I decided that I would invest in really inexpensive sheet protectors from Amazon.
I would be remiss if I didn’t try and plug my Country Gardening Printable Binder (use reader discount code LETSGARDEN for 20% off) one last time.
I created 14 pages of beautifully color coordinated gardening binder printables, INCLUDING everything you need to start organizing your daily, weekly, monthly garden tasks! Trust me, it’s going to save you a ton of time vs. making your own! With our gardening binder you can finally:
- Save planning time and easily organize your garden systematically by the square foot. You’ll never buy too many seeds or plant too many starts again!
- Completely eliminate undernourished/neglects plants, vegetables and flowers with a proven garden task management system THAT WORKS.
- Create a well planned, successive garden that yields a steady stream of product all season long.
- Create a reference system for the future that can be used to create even more successful gardens over the comming seasons.
- Skip right to the fun part of assembling your gardening binder with ready made, printable binder templates.
The Country Gardening Printable Binder took several weeks for us to design……so you can save yourself a huge amount of time and skip RIGHT to the fun part….starting to plan your next amazing garden!
You can purchase our Country Gardening Printable Binder templates using a discount only available to our readers! Save 20% if you use the coupon code LETSGARDEN during check out. Just click on the image below to be taken to our storefront! If you only want to download the FREE printable garden planner stickers then keep scrolling down for the download link.
I hope you love these super cute, gardening binder printables as much as I do! I hope this how to make a gardening binder post inspires you to think about how to organize your gardening binder to be beautiful & functional. If you do the work I know that you’ll have your most successful harvest ever. It’s really worth it…I promise!
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