Journaling has many benefits, including mental health benefits. When you combine the mental health benefits of AeroGarden-ing with the benefits of journaling, the rewards are that much greater! Plus, journaling your AeroGarden’s progress allows you to truly appreciate how much your AeroGarden(s) change week-to-week.
Over on Disabled Kitchen and Garden’s Patreon, one of the tiers is called AeroGarden Beginner Journaler. The benefits of this tier are:
Are you just getting started with your AeroGarden(s) and you want to keep track of its progress in a journal but don’t know where to start? Suggest a post about a journal layout based on your family needs and how many pod spaces you will have. You will also get all of the journal suggestion posts before they go up on the site and I’ll also create a journal stencil with pod ovals for printing based on your needs.
One of this blog’s first followers, Jen, presented the following challenge:
I’m trying to figure out the best way to journal. Since my plants are all new or just sprouted, I’ve just been doing a weekly layout , but I think eventually I’ll have to do daily journal entries to keep track of everything.
Jen has the AeroGarden Farm Plus and has mostly been following just those posts.
Below is an example of how my weekly layout looks in one of my Midori Traveler’s Notebooks. This is from Week 9 of my AeroGarden Farm Plus.
Below is an example of Jen’s AeroGarden Farm Plus weekly journal layout.
The layout is very similar to mine, except for Jen uses an amazing journal created by Cara McGee (@ohcararara on Twitter.) You can purchase this Don’t Tell Me to Smile Shark Flexi Journal on Amazon.
Here is the solution I came up with:
On the left side of the journal, you’d draw out the pods for one side of your AeroGarden Farm Plus. On the right side of the journal are seven lines for each pod so you can keep daily notes and not worry about running out of room in your pod circles. On the left, there is still enough room to add a picture of your garden, or stickers, and weekly notes, like pruning and feeding.
Here is an example of how I would use the weekly plus daily layout for Week 9 of my AeroGarden Farm Plus:
The title areas are still the same, except for at the very top, I noted which side of my AeroGarden Farm Plus this entry is for.
Instead of noting “left” or “right” in the left/right sides of the journal to correspond with the sides of the Farm Plus, the left side notes what is growing in this side of the garden and the right side is label “Daily”.
On the left side, I would continue to label each circle, plus I’ve also numbered each fruit to match it with the daily log on the right. I would continue to add flower stickers and pollinator stickers just to make me happy. The image would remain as well as the note area under the image.
On the right side, there are seven lines per pod for each day of the week. Down the left side of those lines, I would number each line to correspond with the date. Then, I would just note things as needed, instead of trying to fit it all inside the pod circles. I’ve also created a legend at the bottom since I have three different ‘P’s on on my fruit side: Pepper, Pruned, and Pollinated.
This layout would work great for fruits and for lettuce where you have to harvest the lettuce every few days once it reaches it certain age.
The weekly layout that I currently use and that Jen is currently using is still fine for herbs since those don’t need to be tended to quite as frequently.
You can download the PDF version of the blank AeroGarden Farm Plus Weekly plus Daily Journal example and download the PDF version of the example use so you can look at it at a proper size.
If you need help with your AeroGarden Journal, then support Disabled Kitchen and Garden on Patreon so that I can continue to create necessary disability #OwnVoices resources.
