Propagation: Record Keepping, 1 by Mipii

Mipii wrote:
Some pretty powerful and useful programs come preloaded on your computer or laptop. I use Windows so Microsoft programs and software that came with Microsoft Office. A couple of the best for record keeping is Excel and Access. I'll highlight a few praises and hope people chime in with their own experience and expertise.

By no means am I an expert, nor is my system foolproof, but striving for perfection gets me much closer than doing nothing. I like creating digital files because I can copy and paste much faster and easier than writing with an old fashioned pen and paper.

Everybody has something to teach and everybody has something to learn. That's why Dave's Garden (DG) is so awesome. I advocate just start and play around to see what you can do.

There's nothing like a spreadsheet, with Excel I have a workbook comprised of as many spreadsheets as I care to add. I have yet to exhaust the space or computing capabilities. Notice my named tabs at the bottom.

Screenshot #1 shows my 'Have List', there is no limitation to categories. Whatever components you want to keep track of, give it a category/heading. Don't be shy, extensive record keeping is important. The more headings you can come up with, the better for running queries. You can also sort til your hearts content for viewing only relevant information -- information you want to look at that moment, or for keeping 'most used information' at the front of the line.

Screenshot #2 shows tab 'New Seed' This is what I use to keep track of new seed and what the plant's requirements are. I can color code sun and moisture requirements and I can also sort to find out what and where I can plant in dryer locations for example. The possibilities are near endless. the bottom half of the screenshot shows what can be done via the sort for planting planning. Taller plants get planted behind medium height varieties and shorter plants get planted in front, etc.

Screenshot #3 shows an insert on the New Seed tab, this is a formula that computes for me. I have three seeds that need a moist warm stratification followed by a moist cold stratification period. All three seeds have different times for each, therefore I want to follow the recommendations first, then modify if necessary for next time. Once I've got the end dates computed, I enter those into my Outlook Calender so I get reminded when something is ready for the next step. Once they have moved to the next step, I input the date along with the required number of days to get the end date for the final step.

If you don't have or can't /don't want to afford purchasing Microsoft Office, there's a fix for that too, it's called Open Office. Here's the link to download:
http://www.openoffice.org/