Online journal - getting started

Ok I am so glad people are still posting to this thread... I am really interested in finally doing a real garden journal (thank you very much for this feature, BTW! I just love Dave's!). I've tried starting 2 or 3 other journals but nothing really felt "right" (or maybe I just didn't have a clue what I was doing... )

My question has to do with the similarities between the journal and trade list. Am I adding a plant on two separate lists? Or should I only be using one for current plantings (like the journal) and one for items I can trade or that I want? I'm getting myself really confused on that one. I mean to say, I think, that I don't know exactly WHERE to put my current plantings (and or seeds sow or to sow)... journal? or trade list? or both?

(Know what might be really cool? How cool would it be to go to the PDB and find the plant that you have and be able to tick a box and add that item to your journal and/or trade list?!!)

Thanks for listening to the ramblings of a mad gardener (and that's "mad" as in "as a hatter"! lol)

~ Carole

From your mouth to Dave's ear, Carole!

Terry, let's talk sometime about a good journal, home "own" journal. :-) (not DG, but OUR stuff, and perhaps nice stuff we can pass down to our kids).

Carole -

Not sure if you ever got your answers.....but here goes to the best of my abilities.

The Journal and Trade Lists are two separate things. However, Dave has made some interaction between them possible (you're able to copy items from your Journal to your Trade List and also from your Trade List to your Journal).

The Journal can be used for anything! I've seen people use it for crafts, recipes, home improvement projects, as well as, gardening. The idea would be to set up Categories in your Journal (Perennials, Annuals, Shrubs, Trees, etc) in your Journal. You need to decide what's best for you. Some use the ones I mentioned other set up by genus (Roses, Daylilies, Hosta).

Then you can create your items within these categories and add notes, photos, etc as you go along. Lets say you collect seed from one of your annuals. You can then Copy the item to your Trade List and show it as Seed you have to trade.

Let's say you really want some Monarda 'Jacob Cline' and you list it in your trade list as a Wanted item. When you get it in trade you cant then Copy it to your Journal from your trade list. You will need to add other info to the Journal entry after you've copied it but the Genus/species/cultivar info can be copied to the category in your Journal. You'll just need to add Status, Location, and any notes/comments after it's copied to the Journal.

Now all of this is just a suggested way of using these tools. There are endless possibilities. I have created separate Journals to keep a list of gardening tasks I need to do in Spring, Fall, etc. Some people don't like entering all the data item by item in their Trade Lists and actually make ONE entry and list all of their items for trade. It's not searchable that way but they can direct people to their list and not have to spend hours entering 200 seed genus/species in the computer.

I always tell people, that I found the biggest help to be looking at other people's journals. Feel free to browse mine and get some ideas. I wouldn't say I've got the greatest Journal but it does what I need it to do (although I am VERY behind on updating it!). I really do lots of my Journal work in the winter.

Let me know if you have other questions.
Brenda

dirttiger - sorry I didn't reply to your Sept 5th posting!! I feel terrible! In case you've not figured it out here's how to COPY an item to another Journal.

Click on the Category that the item is listed in (let's say it's Annuals). This brings up a list of the items you have in that category. In the far right column there is a number of actions you can take...Add, View, Edit, Delete and Move. Click on View, which shows the entry and any additional sub-entries for that item. You'll then need to CLONE the item which essentially makes a copied entry in the same Journal and Category that your current one is in. (note you can decide whether to copy all the sub-entries or not). Once you have cloned it, you can then go to the Cloned item and then MOVE it to the other Journal (use the MOVE function on the category listing above). Hope that explains it well enough. If not let me know.

Brenda

Ahhhh see the light bulb? hehe
It's ok... "I" do! lol

Thanks bunches, Brenda!
That really DOES help!!

Hugs,
~ Carole

Brenda, after much goofing around, wrinkling of the brow, and smoke billowing out the ears (from the gears grinding! lol) ... I found something here about moving items from one journal to another.

Most of what you said above... Select View from the right column of the item you want to move. At that point the options are:

Add an entry to this item.
Add a milestone to this item.
Edit this item.
Clone this item.
Delete this item.
Move this item to another category.
Move this item to another journal.
Copy this item to your tradelist.
Print this item (with images).
Print this item (without images).
External View.
Journal Homepage.

I chose 'Move this item to another journal' and was even able to select my category on the new journal. Worked like a charm!

Feel free to check my journal any time... though I'm still working on it (until the day I die lol)

~ Carole

Carole - Right you are!! I *thought* I had done MOVE before but sure missed it when I looked at the choices. Thanks for correcting my error!

Dirttiger - Please follow Carole's instructions on MOVING and not mine....much more simplified.

Wow! That hardly ever happens any more (me being right) LOL (blushing now). Just glad I could help.. but even more glad I figured it out! LOL

And I was serious about someone (or anyone) checking my journal to offer suggestions.. I'm open.

~ Carole

Hey Carole I can't see your Journal!! Looks like you've marked it Private. To change it to Public you click on the PRIVACY link on Your Journal main page.

Ruh Roh! Not intentionally anyway... going to fix it now.
Thanks for letting me know!

Looks like you're off to a good start, Carole. I've been thinking of starting a Daily Journal ala Terry. I see you've done the same. Looks like you've got quite a few different garden beds too! I love to read people's journals so I'll check in from time to time to see what you've got going on. :-D

Oh good! So you think I'm on the right track?
Yes, I have yours and Terry's Journals open in another window for reference.
I've created 3 new journals with different categories (hmmm are they all visible to you?) and I'm in the process of moving stuff to the right places. I'm nowhere NEAR done, of course, but I wanted to be sure I was headed in the right direction ; )

Thanks for checking!

This message was edited Oct 9, 2004 6:29 PM

Yep! I see all 3 of your journals. I think if you set your Privacy setting to Public then people can see all of your journals.

Hi, just started 'journaling' today in preparation of finally moving to a home that I actually own, and can start planting for real. Question is, since I have been adding plants sort of 'higglety pigglety', is there any way to have the entries organized alphabetically, instead of by order of entry? Or does that have to done manually (if it can be done at all)? I have over 500 plants to enter, and if I go nuts like my last garden, I will have over 4000 eventually. Very difficult to find entries that are not ordered alphabetically.

palmbob, first congratulations on your new home!! that's awesome ~ and exciting!!

my suggestion would be to utilize the 'Add this plant to your trade list' link at the bottom of each PDB page to add items to your have / wish list. you can still edit the names if you'd like, but i rarely find it necessary.

you can always sort on any column in any of your lists by clicking on the header "Click on any table header to sort by that column."

hope this helps.
~ Carole

Congratulations for your new home, Palmbob!

How do I show how many of each variety, ie, Orinoco bananas I have?

Larry - are you wanting to show how much you have for TRADE? I see you have this listed in your Journal which is just like a written notebook, so you can just ADD an entry to that Journal item (Orinoco bananas). If you want to make this item available to others to see you have it to Trade then you'll need to start your Trade List.

I am not interested in trading at this point. What I do want is to show in catagorys that I have 5 Orinico bananas. How can I do that?

Larry.

Larry - then you can COPY the single Orinico entry you already have. You can say you want FOUR copies and it creates them at one time for you. You then can edit each one with unique info/data on growth, location, etc. To create a copy you must be viewing the entry you want to copy and then select "Clone this Item". It then asks how many clones you want. The rest is pretty easy to follow.

Let me know if that doesn't get you where you need to go.

Langbr, Thank you for help.

Larry

Your welcome. :-D

By golly I new it was here

Hello Abby -- welcome to Dave's Garden! I take it you found the "help" thread you were looking for? LOL

I need help with the " to do" option. Have set up my journal, but when I select "to do", nothing happens, other than it tells me to use the menu on the right which doesn't appear. Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Oops! I now see how to access "to do". Now I need to know can you use this on more than one item individually? For example, if I have a "to do" item for my iris beds, must I enter a todo item for all 200 irises individually, or is there a way to enter a todo item globally?

I was hoping with Judy's inquiry that I would find out how to access the 'To Do' page. I tried it several times.
It reads 'Use the Journal Menu on the right to add a new item.' There is nothing on the right on the Journal page or the 'To Do' page.
Thanks for any help.
Linda

Found TO DO area by accident. After an individual item has been entered, go back to that item and hit add. Then when the add page comes up, under item "action I performed", you will see TO DO. Now I want to know if this type of action can be performed on a bed, or does the action have to be performed on an individual item. Waiting for an answer.

Judy, why don't you start a new thread with this question?

Hi I followed Terry's advice on how to "add an item" to my journal. When I try to, the page just returns to the main page... :(

Hello... another newbie here... I am not the greatest with plants, but have learned from my Grandmother since I was young. I have taught myself a lot over the years by trial and error. I wanted to say, I was just so excited when I stumbled across this site today. I have been working on my journal, again by trial and error, but since I found this thread, I think I will get the hang of it. I wanted to say Thank You! to Dave, and all the Admin people who obviously enjoy this enough to share with, and help the rest of us (and all the members who are so gracious to share also!). So.... Hat's off to you! and thanks again! I hope I am able to get the hang of it, so that I use this regularly. R in STL

tiny --- Welcome!!! Your first day here! Whoo hooo...you're gonna have a blast. I can't believe you're already working on the Journal. I think it took me until day 3 or so to get that far. LOL

Just give a holler wherever you happen to be here on Dave's (DG) if you get stuck on an aspect of the site. Everyone is very eager to help ya out. Keep an eye on the Dave's Garden FORUM because that's where announcement, site suggestions and ideas are discussed. You can also get help on site problems & issues.

Also be sure to head over to the Welcome Mat forum and say hello and introduce yourself. If you're into Lilies or Daylilies or Iris I'm sure I'll see ya around quite a bit. Are you a doctor or nurse? I noticed the stethoscope around your neck in the photo. :-D

Hello Langbr, thank you so much for your warm welcome.... I will have to navigate my way around and find the lilies... ;-) There is so much to do, and I will be going back to work in just a couple days... I wish I had found this two weeks ago *grin* But, I will come as often as my schedule permits.. new ideas and suggestions are what I need. :-( not a Dr. or nurse... firefighter and emt for the state of NY... although I just moved this last year, back to St. Louis, MO and I am not sure I am going to transfer my emt to this state... although my firefighting, I think I'll hold on to *wink* I miss doing them both as a volunteer up by Alleghany National Forest, so, who knows? maybe one day I'll move back... Thank you again for your warm welcome... I really look forward to learning this site and all it has to offer.
R~
a pic of western NY ;-)

Wow! Gorgeous photo, R. :-D

A big ol 'hearty' welcome to DG to ya, tinygardener !!

Nice to meet ya .. and truly enjoyed that beautiful pic you've shared and posted!!

- Magpye

I can't seem to get into my journal this afternoon. I will only let me access the "default journal' which is
empty. The journal that has all my entries is "Elephant Butte Spring 2005 through ? (48 items.)" When I click on it I just stay in the empty journal. I can access it through the "view other journals" option but can not edit it from there. Any ideas? I am probably just making a dumb mistake but can't seem to get past it. Sorry for the trouble.
Homer (aka Angele)

Try scrolling down until you see your categories for this journal. Can you get into them and add to and/or edit them?

I can't get to them from my journal page but will try from the view other journals page and let you know.

So you can't see the "Access by Category" or "Access by Status" areas? (Be sure you've clicked on the "Elephant Butte" journal in the "Manage Journals" area first.)