Hi there, I've been searching through past threads, but didn't really find what I am looking for. I would like to set up an Excel spreadsheet to track all of my seeds and trades but I fear that it's going to take me several attempts to come up with an efficient layout. If you have found a successful way to track these things via spreadsheet, could you either post a screen capture(s) here, or send me a dmail?
I started to use the trade s/w on this site, but ran into problems early on. I find it a bit cumbersome to use...
THANKS!
Spreadsheets for tracking seeds and trades
I use the Trade Tracker, but I also put together an Excel "database" to keep track of my seeds a couple of years ago... it's now woefully out of date! For me, it worked better to keep the 2 aspects -- trading and keeping track of my stash -- separate, although I did have an Excel column where I could put the source for each type of seed (eg, "Tomato Growers Supply" or "DG Wrightie").
I'm sure there might be a better way to organize it... but mine was just an alphabetical list (by botanical name -- made me learn them!). I had columns for height, for color, for sun/shade preference, etc. I combined a bunch of aspects into a single column by using codes... I'd put "F" for fragrant, "SS" for self-sowing, "B" for attracts butterflies, etc. I also had a column for indicating how much seed I had on hand, which let me know at a glance if I was likely to have extra to share... I didn't use exact numbers but rather used terms like "tons," "lots," "some," and "few."
Hi Critter, yeah, that sounds like the draft spreadsheet that I've set up. My problem is that I tend to get part of the way in to a project like this, then realize that I coulda/woulda/shoulda done something differently. :>)