How to record flowering date?

[kGarden]

I try to record the "When" dates in the garden, but I'm not very good at it. Perhaps there are better systems available?

I have a list (using an APP which synchronises it between Phone, iPad and PC which I find very handy) with all my plants in Walking Order, one list per bed.

I started adding "20Jul15" after the plant name (an easy "edit", even on a phone) and then adding "-03Aug" when it finished. Then I added 200/40,W=20 for the overall flower spike height, the length of the actual flowering part, and the width of a flower (when appropriate - some of the Lilies I have are like dinner plates, I'm interested to know which of my Delphiniums have the most extreme height so I can favour them for backs of borders)

The Plants List became a mess ... so I transcribed the flowering dates into a different List, by Date rather than the Walking-Order that the plants appear in the beds. Of course different years, different dates, but roughly the same sequence.

But I forget which ones I have / have-not recorded ... and I miss recording lots of end dates (because I don't have a prompt to tell me that last year something FINISHED around now, only when it STARTED)

I suppose what I need is a list of "Should start flowering now" and "Should be finishing now", based on prior year data, so that I could specifically check those plants twice a week to catch the date when they start/stop.

Some sort of APP perhaps?

Maybe hardly anyone records this info / detail? I want it so that I can move things around in the knowledge of what-flowers-when and also to invite chums round when such-and-such is likely to be at its best ("This spring is 2 weeks behind, so Peonies are likely to be in flower on XXX")

The only site I remember seeing good flowering info is John's e.g. http://www.johnjearrard.co.uk/list.html

[charlie]

We find not recording flowering dates gives hours of matrimonial amusement as we argue each year whether its earlier or later! :lol:

Sorry cant help with the tech stuff does the annoying windows 10 help thing do that sort of thing (prompts)?

[LONGK]

I just upload onto Flickr the same day usually and that tells me on the occasions when I do check.

[kGarden]

So ... as part of my Daffodil "Which of these do I like, when do they flower / succeed earlier ones, which might look good planted together / flower at the same time" I made a spreadsheet.

I decided that, over the course of a few years in order to allow for seasonal weather / temperature variations, I needed to record:

• Emerging
• Showing bud
• Bud has colour
• 1st flower open
• Last bud has colour
• Last flower is open
• Flowers fading (i.e. the last ones that opened, earlier ones might be spent by then)
• Finished (identified as when I might choose to deadhead the last stem)

Also stem height of the flower, and width of the flower (and perhaps I should also measure length / diameter of the trumpet ...)

When I've tried to do this (casually, without the structured data of a spreadsheet) in the past the biggest issue is knowing whether I have recoded a particular "fact" about a plant. So I repeatedly re-recorded the fact that it is flowering, and then "ignored" / threw-away the later reports ... but "Finished flowering" is often not recorded at all, as there is no indication that it has happened - particularly if the plant doesn't need / get deadheaded.

All far to OTT for most people I expect ...

So to solve the "have a recorded a particular flowering-event, or not" I have set up conditional-formatting on the date columns in my spreadsheet so that the next-event is highlighted. The rows on the sheet are in "walking order" down the bed / plot, so all I have to do is look to see which box is highlighted, and if that "event" has now occurred - if so I write the date in it, and when I key that into the master copy, and print a new sheet for next week's walk-around, all events that have now occurred cause the subsequent event to highlight.

A picture is going to say far more than my pathetic attempt at words, so here it is:



(This is all first-year-after-planting, so the dates are probably much later than they will be once the bulbs are established. We had a very mild winter, and we have had no cold Easterly winds in the Spring (which can seriously delay Spring for us here), but equally we have not had a single day close to 20C as we would normally expect a heat-wave of some sort by now. So flowering-period is probably much longer than in a warmer Spring - which i suppose means that all my record-keeping this Spring has been a complete wast of time!

[JohnJearrard]

Love it. Don't really understand the technology (my mobile only makes calls, and it doesn't do that most of the time) but it is fascinating to see it doing something useful.
Can't offer any suggestions for improving technique, but I get the feeling you're quite good at that anyway.

Your data will accumulate over a few seasons and it will be interesting to see if cultivars follow the same sequence each year or if it varies. I have just been reading a report suggesting that Magnolia cultivars flower in a different sequence in New Zealand to the UK, which is presumably the different climatic pattern.

This years data will be especially interesting in the long term. I have often wondered what difference it makes to daffodils when they are established compared with new plantings. Rijnveld's Early Sensation for example probably needs to go into the ground early (before it is available for sale) and may be upset in the first year. Late flowering cultivars should be less affected. Difficult to know if it actually happens that way - it's a question your data should be able to answer eventually.

[kGarden]

Can't offer any suggestions for improving technique

Ah, but you already have :) Your Blog with index of plants and year-on-year photos and notes is the only one of its type that I have found. I expect others exist, along with equivalent personal, but unpublished, records, but I haven;t stumbled over them. I find the extent of your plant list and recording daunting, but I'm keen to have a similar resource for my, much smaller, collection of plants.

My real problem with photos & notes is that it doesn't tell me when a plant finished flowering, and the elapsed duration period is more important to me (for planning movement of plants, and also curiosity) than the start-flowering date.

Other problem I have with a photo record is that when I get back to my desk and download the photos I then have to label then with the name of the plant (otherwise its useless for searching), and for that I have to look it up ... I take a wide-angle photo of the section of the bed, from a distance, and then a close up of the flower and, usually!!, the wide-angle shot is enough to work out what the plant is (from my walking order plant lists) ... but its a bit of a chore. Perhaps I could use GPS in the camera to avoid having to label anything as precise location, and direction the camera is facing, could be known :)

[kGarden]

I have just been reading a report suggesting that Magnolia cultivars flower in a different sequence in New Zealand to the UK, which is presumably the different climatic pattern.

Meant to mention earlier that my Cherries are flowering in a different order this year. My Tai Haku, Great White, are in flower, but the Royal Burgundy are nowhere near flowering as yet.

For a number of years I recorded the date of Ash and Oak coming into leaf to put some statistics on the "Oak before Ash : we're in for a dash. Ash before Oak : we're in for a soak" old wives' table. The year we had the wettest Summer on record the Oak was a good 6 weeks ahead of the Ash - which is a bigger margin that I have ever recorded I think!

[kGarden]

Agggghhhh ... I shouldn't Google these things when I should be working! Via Google I found Robert Marsham's "27 indications of Spring" which he, and subsequently his heirs, recorded continuously from 1736 until 1958. a Scholarly Articles search then turned up interesting research into what causes the variations - I've always been certain that it wasn't the COMING Summer! and that Express headlines predicting the coming Hottest/Coldest/Wettest/Driest Winter/Summer for 10 years/100 years/Ever!! based on Groundhog Day or similar were balderdash ...

For example, I found this graph interesting (but I left the Statistical Maths workings behind on the Internet where I found it!!)



"The annual means for the first leafing dates of silver birch (empty circles) and pedunculate oak (filled circles) based on UK Phenology Network data. The red lines denote the 2 years for which the Central England temperatures from the previous September 1st to end of year were highest."

where the extremely short red lines correlate to record September temperatures the previous year.

About Robert Marsham
Predicting a change in the order of spring phenology in temperate forests

[JohnJearrard]

My real problem with photos & notes is that it doesn't tell me when a plant finished flowering, and the elapsed duration period is more important to me (for planning movement of plants, and also curiosity) than the start-flowering date.

Oh the dangers of obsessive behaviour!
I don't record the date things end on the web-site but I do photograph (almost) everything in flower, every week. The pictures all get filed together (eventually) so I know when a plant finished because I stop having photos of it! It's not a perfect system because sometimes I just get bored of things that seem to go on and on, but over the years I accumulate a fairly accurate indication.
However, you are right it does involve labelling every picture with species and date and then filing them - it's my little job for a Monday evening!

[kGarden]

I've had a bit of an idea which I am trialling.

Recap: My beds are named (generally using the theme for the bed, and N, S, E, W for the various components of that bed), and then I record a list of the plants in walking-order (usually from the house-end of the bed, if it faces that way) counting the number of strides [from the end of the bed] to each plant.

When sorted the list is in walking-order, so easy to see that something I don't recognise / can't remember the name of is between a couple of other things that I do know.

For example the area we call Shrubbery has four beds bisected by paths, and the beds are called NE, NW, SE, SW and the Walking Order list for the NE bed looks like this:

• Plants Shrub - Blue and White - Walking Order
  
  (Measurements are from the NORTH / HOUSE end)
  
  NORTH EAST BORDER NE00
  
  NE01 Hamamelis x intermedia "Pallida"
  NE03b Cytisus battandiereii
  NE03-06 Muscari
  NE05 Iris Black Dragon
  NE06m Cistus
  NE06f Ceratostigma
  NE07 Camassia Leichtlinii Alba x3
  NE07 Paeonia
  NE08b Syringa
  NE08 Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation'
  NE12 Ceanothus "Victoria"
  ...

(suffixes f=front, m=middle, b=back)

I store my photographs strictly by date (that's how my camera uploads them, one folder per date), and when appropriate I rename files from IMG1234.JPG to IMG1234_PlantName.JPG (retaining the IMG1234 bit so that if the file gets copied to my blog etc. I still have the means to track it back to its original location). I also rename the date folders from "2016_05_01" to "2016_05_01_BirthdayParty" so that I can scan my eye down and find the appropriate folder, and I duplicate the date-folder for a single date so that photos for various parts of the garden can be grouped logically - so that Ornamentals are in one folder and and vegetables are in another.

The folders by date look like this:



I then have another set of folders, specifically for the garden, with one folder per "view" of the garden. I stand in the same place each time, so the photos record a "time lapse" of that part of the garden



In the main I just have two folders - one from each end of the path - but for the Shrubbery I also stand at the corners of the path facing each bed diagonally.

So I thought I would extend that system and make one folder for each plant, with its walking-order "stride count", and then I could easily figure out from the photo where abouts in the bed the plant was (e.g. take a wide angle shot first, and then a close-up). That is further helped because I take my photos "in order" as I walk down the bed.

Turns out this works very well, for me. I don't have to remember, or lookup, the name of the plant, just take a "wide angle" shot of the bed, and then a close up of the plant, and I can then figure out from the Folder List which one it is, and just drag the file to that folder.



Only problem is that it is taking quite a while to go through the 10-year backlog of Photos assigning them to the correct folder!