Was thinking of starting a blog

Try My Folia as that is an excellent way to keep a record of what you do!

Dead easy.

I use mine to record my trials! and tribulations....and as a record of when I am doing this year to look back next year.

I use blogger, you need a google account but it is free.

I keep one as a diary and to store photos of progress. I found it very useful in comparing this year's broad beans with last year's.

I thought this year's beans were on the short side so checked what they were like last year and discovered that I was worried that they were too short! Goes to show you won't remember everything.

I started mine this year with the intention of keeping a diary and taking photos. Just need to update it regularly as I seem to run out of time.

I use Google's Blogger, it's really simple to use and have my own domain name for it firegardenuk.com - I keep it updated as much as I can, my stats say people visit it for about 20s then bog off lol.

It's exceptionally easy. I use Blogger and haven't found any difficulties, the only thing "they" don't tell you is find a program to save your pictures at a size suitable for displaying on the web rather than the full size they come out of your camera - if you don't you will eat up your free space too quickly and it takes ages for anyone who clicks on a picture to get the full size version. Picasaweb is free and apparently very easy to use.

I started mine just over a year ago for self-discipline - plain and simple! Bag End is the sixth garden I have created from scratch and sadly, very little remains as a record of any of the development of its predecessors. The idea was been stolen fair and square from Mrs Flummery who explained to me that the Veg Heaven blog existed mostly for her own record and that's when the lightbulb went on and I realised that the same approach would work for me.

With previous gardens I have always started with the best of intentions taking photos of the initial phases but those pictures languish on my hard drive doing very little but taking up space ... and as time goes by it is too easy to forget to take the next set, and the next, and then you're so far behind it seems hardly worthwhile trying to catch up.

The discipline of putting Bag End into Blogland has really worked for me and I must be terribly sad because I go back and look at my own blog - but having cut down 48 Leylandii in 12 months it is already easy to forget how bad the place looked when we moved in so I go and have a look at old photos to encourage me!

Don't know about other providers, but with Blogger you can have your blog private to start with so that no-one can see the mess you make until you've tidied it up and are ready for visitors (you can guess how I know this!)

Try Myfolia, it is more than just a blog. It is designed for gardening so includes everything you need including sowing harvesting times and in a pictorial format, task listing and plant identification, plant & seed swap, groups, Temperature and weather, seed stash, wish list as well as a Journal system where you can even keep individual posts private, this is difficult with Blog software. Have a look at mine HERE, oh and most of it is free.

Went on your link and they are updating the site! Said to have a walk round the garden and have a cup of tea and then come back so going to do just that!!!

I write mine for garden stuff, cooking, cardmaking, just about anything really. you don't have to have a blog for one topic. Its your blog, do what you like with it! I would have a think about what you really want from it though. Do you want it to draw people in, is it important to you that you get a high number of readers? or are you simply looking to have somewhere to record stuff, that you can share with a small number of friends? the two approaches (and there's nowt wrong with either) need very different blogs and techniques - and i hasten to add, that the blog with a high number of readers requires a lot of work.

Wordpress is quite good too - that's where i blog, although i have, in the past, used other sites. Wordpress is about my favorite, as it allows you to do a lot of tweaking. ~ Urbania to Stoneheads ~ is the URL if you want a lookie.

good luck!!

keth
xx

Thats funny I started a blog only yesterday to link to this website and for the same reasons. I want to keep a track of my garden progress. I thought it might help me to look back and see what went well and what went wrong. In othere words, who, what, where, when and why! lol

I ended up jumping on the Google blogspot band wagon, was first one I checked out. I just wanted something quick and simple to work from. So far I have found it easy to set up, I have put a sort of introduction post on there but need a little more time to get some pictures on there and start my gardening diry!

I did the blog option on the Vine, just to see how easy it would be. Couldn't think of much to say (but always manage to find plenty to say on here<g>)

I have just tried the blog here. I think it is a brilliant tool for recording what you have done and progress made. Can anyone see any problem with maintaining this blog for future reference etc or should I transfer it to a proper blog?

When we first got our plot we hadnt a clue, so asked lots of questions on the vine, made some good friends and ended up sharing the piccies of what we'd been doing and how we were progressing on a thread on the vine. After a while we realised that we were continuing to post in order to give ourselves an aide memoire of what we'd acchieved, what had been planted where, how things looked at various stages of growth and generally so we could look back to see how far we'd come, and in effect it began to feel as tho we were posting on that thread for our own ends and in order to share what we were doing, which is fine, but not if your forcing it down everyones throats! At that point we decided to start our blogspot, putting a link on the vine and in our signatures so that anyone who was still interested could take a look and see what we were up to. I know some find it a tad egotistical, as though you are holding up your acchievements to the world and saying 'Look how clever we are!', but in reality our blog is there so we can look back and see what we did and where we were at at any point in time. If you want an allotment diary, one that you can share with other folks and also keep some of your pictures safe, then a blog is a darn good way of doing it!

Hi Suzanne, thanks for that. I had come to the same conclusion. When we look at our photographs from last summer we cant quite believe it is the same garden. Our efforts are purely a home garden with a small veg plot and we know that we will never be as successfull as 'proper' growers and allotment folk but never the less if we are able to look back at our records regarding sowing and growing and alter plans in future years as neccessary.
The question is, will the blog on the grapevine be the right place for this or should I start it on blogspot or blogger?