Beginner Journal?

Does anyone have a journal set-up that you could send me a link to? I found the journal tool button but am unsure how to set up what I want to do. Basically just want to catalog names of plants I've purchased and then have links to plantfiles in my journal for quick reference.

If you go to the "community" tab and click on the journals link, it pulls up a list of everyone who's got journals that are publicly available. It sorts them in order of how many entries the person has, so the first group of people on the list have a ton of entries and if you look at a few of those you'll get some good ideas. There are probably as many different ways to set up a journal as there are people here! Or if there is a particular person's journal that you want to look at, click on their username and you'll see a link to see their journal if it's publicly available.

If you want links to Plant Files, the way to do that is to go to the PF entry, and then you'll see a link at the bottom of the page that says "add this plant to my journal" or something along those lines. I'd recommend getting your journal categories and everything set up first because when you import, it lets you choose right away what category to put it into, etc. Then when you go in your journal and look at that entry, it'll have a link back to the PF entry (except there's a bug that if a plant in PF has a genus and cultivar but no species name, then the plant will still get added to your journal just fine, but the link back to PF won't get made)

Thank-you! You are the best help here at Dave's! Good to know on how to make the links.

Aghhhh okay, where's the edit or delete button for journals? Say I want to delete a category????

If you go to your main journal page, under the main menu heading you'll see a link that says manage categories, that's what you would click on and it'll give you an option to delete a category. But you have to move all the items out of it first, it won't let you delete a category that has plants associated with it.

Hopefully my last problem...lol.

I still don't see a link back to plantfiles to view my plant in my journal. Sure adding it from plantfiles to my journal added some info but not much and there's not general link back with pics and all the details from plantfiles????

Did the plant you added have a species name associated with it? There's a bug that if it doesn't have a species name it will add the plant to your journal but won't put the link in. Otherwise, you need to go to the screen where you're viewing (but not editing) the entry for that plant, you'll see the PF link if you scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Magilla Perilla is one,
Raspberry Ice crepe myrtal is another and
Sweet Memories Duranta

I've given up adding more until I understand the journal better. Must I just add the link to plantfiles in the "add notes" section of each?

The Perilla doesn't have a species name in the entry, just the genus & cultivar name so it will be subject to the bug I mentioned and won't work. I couldn't find Rasberry Ice crape myrtle in PF at all so are you sure you added it through PF and not manually? (I found Raspberry Sundae and Raspberry Dazzle, but no Raspberry Ice) But the Duranta should work (and did work for me when I tried adding it to my journal just now) so I wonder if you're looking in the right place for the link? Or did you maybe add it manually rather than from Plant Files? I don't know how to post screen shots yet from my Mac (it doesn't have the same keyboard stuff as PC's) so I'll walk you through step by step how to get to where you'd see the link if it was there.

Go to the main page of your journal. Then either click on "access all items" underneath the main menu category, or go to the access by category list and click on the category that your Duranta is in. Now look through the list of plants on the page, and scroll until you find the Duranta entry. Now click on "View" in the actions column. Next, scroll down the page past all the links to add an entry, clone this item, delete this item, etc, and right underneath that list of links you should see something that says "this plant is in Plant Files", and then there'll be a hyperlink with the plant's name. Click on this, and it takes you to PF.

You're right, not raspberry ice. So sorry: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/3014/

OK, that one has a species so it ought to work fine too. Did you try following my directions above to see if you see the link on the Duranta and the crape myrtle?

ecrane,

oh my goodness you are right on! I looked up the duranta as you've said. sure 'nuff! Thank-you! seems a mighty long process to get to the link though. :( I'm sure admins had their hands full perfecting this over the years though so only better things to come we hope!

It's really only 2 clicks...it might have seemed longer because I was trying to give really detailed instructions but I don't think 2 clicks from the main journal page to the plant entry is too bad. And that's the screen where it makes the most sense to have the PF link since that's where all the other detailed info about the plant is, the screen before that is just a list of all your plants, I'm not sure where there'd be room for the link there.

Oh you're right again. :) It was just late and I was tired.

Can I make sub-categories?

For instance, I'm still a newbie gardener. My biggest concern at the moment prior to planting is *plant in full sun/shade/part shade?

I made categories like everyone else seems to: trees, perennials, etc etc

But within those can I have sub categories to read: sun, part shade, full shade?

You can definitely make subcategories. Go to the "manage categories" link on your main page, then click on the category that you want the subcategories under, and you'll see a box to add a new subcategory.

The other thing you could do if you don't think you're going to care about the sun/shade requirements once you've planted everything is to use the "status" field to cover that...create a status for sun, shade, part shade, etc and enter that for each of your plats, then when you're viewing your list of all your trees for example, you can click on the status column to sort by it, and that'll list out all the sun stuff together, all the shade stuff, etc. Then once you have them all in the ground, you can leave the status field as is or change it to something else if you no longer care about sun/shade. If you make separate sub-categories then it takes a little more work to move things back together if you decide you no longer want them separated out by sun requirements but would rather make your subcategories based on something else like bloom time or some other categorization scheme. Of course if you're already using the status field for something else then never mind!

Oh thanks so much, you should have an "admin" title for sure!