Depending on how large one's collection gets, this can become a project in itself. Ultimately, that's why I gave up trying to do this; it became too much of a project of its own & started to feel too busy work like for me.

Now I keep it all in my head, w/the most pertinent of notes (source, whose mix, how started water or soil rooted & date of potting or repotting) on the labels. The older the plant, the more labels I've stuck in it.

Having been a word processor for many years, I don't want to be making more word processing projects for myself.

The one thing I do try to update every couple of years is my Hoya list so I can be up to date, especially for trading purposes.

I keep several Journals for this purpose.
I have a Weather Journal, where I note temps, winds, precipitation, pollen, et cetera.

I also have a Journal that lists every plant in my collection, number of each, when I received them,
from whom, when they break dormancy, when they bloom, to whom I've given them, and which ones have died.
I also track when I re-pot them, and how they react.

Lastly, I keep a Harvest Journal for my gardening, starting with seed-starting dates, germination rates,
re-potting and fertilization schedules, first blooms, and first fruits. When I begin to pick peppers, I make
a dash-mark for every pod I pluck.

Josh

My plant database is pretty basic. I use Quattro Pro, only because it's the one I learned to use years ago and I'm most comfortable with. I have around 350 plants and I list them alphabetically by Genus then Species. So mine has Genus, Species, Family, Date Aquired, Aquired From, and then I have a column where I put a URL to a photo of it on my photo sharing site. If I lose or sell a plant, I remove it from the list. When I get cuttings, I wait until they root to add them to the list. I keep it up to date as I go, though now and then I'll find something I forgot to remove. It's pretty easy to stay on top of it if you only keep track of basic information.

Denise in Omaha

I have good intentions for keeping a database, but I'm with Pirate Girl - sometimes it feels like work! Pirate girl, I do like the idea of keeping as much info on the label as possible! Maybe I'll try that instead!

Kelly

I use good old fashioned Notebooks. Its pretty basic information, I write down the name, the date I received them, from who or where I got them from, the date of the first bloom(most of this is blank,lol...) My main reason for keeping track is so I know how long I've had the plant and where it came from.

It's really not a lot of work for me because I don't have as many as most of you here...its kind of fun keeping track.

I made an Excel spreadsheet with the species / who it came from (including state for climate change purposes) / and the date I received it.

Works pretty well for me!

Carolyn

I don't really keep notes but I should, my memory could be better and after a while I forget where or who I got my plants from and how old they are. I do try to keep an up to date list of Hoyas but that's about it.

Mike

Wow, I'm just loving your responses... they are each informative in a different way. Personally, I get a weird high out of organizing collections (finessing iTunes puts me in a happy haze), but I have so many of these sorts of detail-oriented projects that I run out of time, even though it's "fun" for me.

It all seems so obvious in retrospect to use more than one tag. I also like the types of information you're recording, pirate girl and Josh - some of these never would have occurred to me until an "I wish I had..." moment. I just love imagining you jotting down hash marks for peppers, Josh... I'll probably think of that every time I eat a pepper now. Maybe I should start counting buds on successive peduncles.

Denise, your database sounds most similar to how I started, except I was using Excel. I liked the idea of being able to sort by various variables, as you do. I toyed with linking to a picture (your method is elegant) but as corny as it sounds, I wanted a database where I could look at a picture of the plant on the same page as my notes. My collection's so big already I really have to work to internalize all the information I'm digging up on each specimen. It helps if every time I'm reading or writing about them, I'm staring them in the face... or... peduncle. That was the main reason I left the spreadsheet method - although I think it is a lot more powerful.

A screenshot of my shelf in Delicious Library to give you an idea of what I mean. (It totally annoys me that it doesn't show their names on the bookshelf!). Right now my notes are pretty sparse (mostly helpful text lifted from various resources) since I just started it last weekend, so ignore that.

Pug and Josh's handwritten journals remind me a lot of the stack of ancient farmers' journals we found tucked away in an old farmhouse my parents acquired with some land. Every day something was recorded - usually only a few sentences about the weather or the crops or the pests, but I think it changed the way both my mom and I looked at journaling.

I really appreciate all of your feedback - it's really helping!

Wow, that's way more organized than I am being about my hoyas. I keep it all in my head, for the most part. I often refer back to old posts and order details emails and the like to find information about when I got such and such hoya, or when I was having success or problems with anything. I don't even have many of my hoyas labeled. But then again, I believe I have far fewer than many here, and I can't really accommodate that many more at the moment anyway, so for now, the only thing I am keeping organized is a list of what I have, and a list of what I want.

The more I think about it, the more I want to go with a hybrid approach - keep clipped notes about the history, debates, and characteristics of the plant in Delicious Library...

...and then follow pirate girl's label strategy to note important dates and noted preferences, that are handy to have at hand when you're about to do something to the plant.

Wow, that phrasing kind of made me sound like Bluebeard and they my prisoners.

I need to update my database. Most of the time when I need info on a plant I have to look at old blog posts until I find the little sentence where I hid the info!

"I just love imagining you jotting down hash marks for peppers, Josh...
I'll probably think of that every time I eat a pepper now."

Here's last year's hash-marks... ;)
Yeah, Thai chilis are prolific! I ate my third Thai this evening, and it was hot...!

!!! Thanks for the visual, Josh. I like your style.