Tom Farmer
Active Member
I have been using the attached sheets as a basis for a 3 ring binder that I use to keep records of each of my plants, and my grow room in general, for the last nine months and it is working great for me. I have a small perpetual soil grow using the full line of Foxfarm soils and nutrients (both concentrates and solubles). I recently celebrated my first anniversary as a grower for my personal medical needs and believe I may now be able to give a little something back to this great community. I still have a huge amount to learn about growing but these sheets and the binder have made me a better grower and I hope they can help others in a similar situation.
I print out the sheets, punch holes in them and keep them in a 3 ring binder. I start each plant's sheet as soon as I put the seed into a wet paper towel or stick a clone under the lights the sheet looks really bare and useless right then but just like the seed/clone it will fill in slowly but surely. My binder has 5 separate tabs: One for plants in the Grow room, another for plants in the Veg room, a Memorial tab for plants of the past, a fourth tab where I keep three sheets of normal lined paper one for what is going on with equipment in the Grow room (when I buy new equipment, change filters, replace a bulb, move the light height, notes on temps, etc), a similar one for equipment in the Veg room and another for common equipment/etc and then a fifth tab where I keep a print out of the attached Foxfarm Soil Feeding Schedule with notes on the normal requirement for pH Up and also a print out of my seed inventory that I update with a new printout when I make a seed purchase. I also keep blank copies of the plant data sheet in the very back of the binder.
I update the individual plants' sheets in pen as I work the plants each day.
I have included a pic of an example sheet filled in with data from one of my current plants, a DNA Genetics Seeds LA Woman 3 and a half weeks into flower. Don't be confused, on my sheets in my binder I fill everything in by hand with pen, I just used GIMP to fill in the text for the example pic because I wanted everyone to actually be able to read it.
Let me explain my notations in the example:
I actually do use four separate colored pens to keep my notes, I bought a five color pack at Staples (the purple pen is currently used to poke holes when starting seeds or clones I hate to waste anything). I keep the pens hooked in the front pocket of the 3 ring binder. I use the Red pen for big events in the plants life, Blue for waterings, Green for nutrient feedings, and Black for molasses quantities plus most everything else. Some of the best information is kept in the notes area - on the attached example I only included one example note but usually I make notes on each plant at least weekly.
My green nutrient notations are a simplified version for notating the FoxFarm soil schedule. As noted in the left column of the attached FoxFarm Soil Feeding Schedule picture, there are seven different recipes that FoxFarm recommends. I use these as the basis, recipe number, for each feedings notation. If I prepare the feeding with a different ratio of liquids/concentrates I note that with a fraction in front of the recipe number as I did on Saturday April 3rd on the attached example when I used only half as much of the liquids/concentrates for recipe #1 as recommended. When I include solubles in the feeding I note that with a fraction after the recipe number that represents the fraction of a teaspoon per gallon that I included. For example, on Thursday, April 22nd, I added a full amount of the recommended liquids and concentrates for recipe #5 plus 1/8 of a teaspoon of Open Sesame per gallon of feeding. I also included 2 ml of blackstrap molasses as noted in black.
I use the red numbers 1 through 10 in the right end of the dates area to document the number of weeks in flower expected.
I have attached a zip file with the data sheet spreadsheet file in both OpenOffice format and in Excel format. I created the spreadsheet in OpenOffice but for those less fortunate I also saved it in Excel format (and test printed it from Excel 2000 without problem).
I am interested in hearing what others use to document their grows. And if you alter this sheet or use a different notation please let us know what you did. I tried to leave some room for additions on the left hand list of dates to record. And if you want to add something to the spreadsheet I think you can delete area from the notes - I use the notes quite a bit and I could still give up probably one third of that area without too much concern and probably up to one half of it if I had to. One thing that I know this data sheet does not collect is the quantity of each feeding. I know what quantity to expect based on the size of pot and the weight so this information is not useful to me and I did not choose to include it. If anything unusual happens with my ladies' appetites I add it to the notes area.
I don't know what I would do without these sheets. They make it so easy to keep track of which plant got what/when, etc. The whole life of each plant is laid out right before me. For my small garden they make it so easy to have a visual representation to refer to real quickly whenever I need.
I hope you find this useful. You have all been so helpful to me over the last year.
Tom
I print out the sheets, punch holes in them and keep them in a 3 ring binder. I start each plant's sheet as soon as I put the seed into a wet paper towel or stick a clone under the lights the sheet looks really bare and useless right then but just like the seed/clone it will fill in slowly but surely. My binder has 5 separate tabs: One for plants in the Grow room, another for plants in the Veg room, a Memorial tab for plants of the past, a fourth tab where I keep three sheets of normal lined paper one for what is going on with equipment in the Grow room (when I buy new equipment, change filters, replace a bulb, move the light height, notes on temps, etc), a similar one for equipment in the Veg room and another for common equipment/etc and then a fifth tab where I keep a print out of the attached Foxfarm Soil Feeding Schedule with notes on the normal requirement for pH Up and also a print out of my seed inventory that I update with a new printout when I make a seed purchase. I also keep blank copies of the plant data sheet in the very back of the binder.
I update the individual plants' sheets in pen as I work the plants each day.
I have included a pic of an example sheet filled in with data from one of my current plants, a DNA Genetics Seeds LA Woman 3 and a half weeks into flower. Don't be confused, on my sheets in my binder I fill everything in by hand with pen, I just used GIMP to fill in the text for the example pic because I wanted everyone to actually be able to read it.
Let me explain my notations in the example:
I actually do use four separate colored pens to keep my notes, I bought a five color pack at Staples (the purple pen is currently used to poke holes when starting seeds or clones I hate to waste anything). I keep the pens hooked in the front pocket of the 3 ring binder. I use the Red pen for big events in the plants life, Blue for waterings, Green for nutrient feedings, and Black for molasses quantities plus most everything else. Some of the best information is kept in the notes area - on the attached example I only included one example note but usually I make notes on each plant at least weekly.
My green nutrient notations are a simplified version for notating the FoxFarm soil schedule. As noted in the left column of the attached FoxFarm Soil Feeding Schedule picture, there are seven different recipes that FoxFarm recommends. I use these as the basis, recipe number, for each feedings notation. If I prepare the feeding with a different ratio of liquids/concentrates I note that with a fraction in front of the recipe number as I did on Saturday April 3rd on the attached example when I used only half as much of the liquids/concentrates for recipe #1 as recommended. When I include solubles in the feeding I note that with a fraction after the recipe number that represents the fraction of a teaspoon per gallon that I included. For example, on Thursday, April 22nd, I added a full amount of the recommended liquids and concentrates for recipe #5 plus 1/8 of a teaspoon of Open Sesame per gallon of feeding. I also included 2 ml of blackstrap molasses as noted in black.
I use the red numbers 1 through 10 in the right end of the dates area to document the number of weeks in flower expected.
I have attached a zip file with the data sheet spreadsheet file in both OpenOffice format and in Excel format. I created the spreadsheet in OpenOffice but for those less fortunate I also saved it in Excel format (and test printed it from Excel 2000 without problem).
I am interested in hearing what others use to document their grows. And if you alter this sheet or use a different notation please let us know what you did. I tried to leave some room for additions on the left hand list of dates to record. And if you want to add something to the spreadsheet I think you can delete area from the notes - I use the notes quite a bit and I could still give up probably one third of that area without too much concern and probably up to one half of it if I had to. One thing that I know this data sheet does not collect is the quantity of each feeding. I know what quantity to expect based on the size of pot and the weight so this information is not useful to me and I did not choose to include it. If anything unusual happens with my ladies' appetites I add it to the notes area.
I don't know what I would do without these sheets. They make it so easy to keep track of which plant got what/when, etc. The whole life of each plant is laid out right before me. For my small garden they make it so easy to have a visual representation to refer to real quickly whenever I need.
I hope you find this useful. You have all been so helpful to me over the last year.
Tom
