Journal

The journal is where you record observations about your organisms over time. Every journal entry is linked to a specific entity and captures what you noticed, when you noticed it, and any relevant growing conditions.

Journal entries build a timeline for each organism — flowering dates, fruiting observations, disease issues, and general notes. Over time, this data becomes valuable for understanding how an organism performs across seasons.

Journal entries are public by default, so other growers can learn from your observations. You can mark individual entries as private if you prefer.

You can add a journal entry two ways: from the Journal page in your dashboard (pick the entity first), or directly from any entity you grow.

Picking a type. The type picker opens a tray of icon tiles grouped by what kind of observation you're logging. If the entity has a history, you'll see a Suggested row at the top with the types other growers tend to record next on this species.

Phenology — observations of seasonal milestones: Dormancy Break, Leaf Out, Flowering, Full Bloom, Finished Flowering, Fruit Set, First Fruit, Harvest, Done Producing, Seed Collection, Leaf Drop. These are the highest-signal entries for breeding work and species comparison. See [Entry Types](#entry-types) below for what each one means and when to log it.

Lifecycle — Planting, Germination, Grafting, Propagation.

Care — Watering, Pruning, Fertilizing, Repotting.

Stress — Disease, Pest, Cold Damage, Heat Damage, Drought Stress. Negative observations are valuable; they help other growers see what struggles in conditions like yours.

Observation — Weight, Measurement, Photo, and Other. Use Weight to log fruit weight or a harvest total — there's a built-in unit picker (grams, kilograms, ounces, pounds).

Terminal — entries that mark the end of your relationship with the plant: Death, Culled, Lost, Stopped Growing. These are also what you create from the entity's "I don't grow this anymore" button (see [Stopping Growing](/help/entities#stopping-growing)). Logging a Culled entry asks for a reason (bad flavor, low yield, disease susceptible, weak growth, no fruit set, cracking, bolted too fast, or other) — those reasons aggregate into the breeding signal Ohtli is designed to surface.

Public vs private. Each entry has a Public/Private toggle. Public entries appear on the entity's page so the community can learn from them. Private entries are only visible to you.

Date observed defaults to today, or to the EXIF date of a photo you attach. You can backdate entries if you're catching up on notes.

Notes, photos, and short videos can be added to any entry. The upload picker accepts both image and MP4 files together. Videos take 10–30 seconds to process through Mux after upload — the form shows "Processing video…" while it works and the staged thumbnail appears once it's ready. If you hit Save while an upload is still in flight, the form queues the save and submits the moment the upload finishes — you don't have to babysit it. Some types reveal extra structured fields when picked — for example, Planting asks about sun exposure, soil type, and container; Cold Damage asks for the temperature; Death asks for a cause (disease, pests, cold, drought, heat, old age, unknown, other).

You may also see entries of type *general*, *fruiting*, or *ripening* on older entity timelines — those are legacy values, no longer offered in the picker but still displayed for historical records.

Every journal entry has a type. Picking the right one is what makes your journal queryable later — phenology charts, harvest windows, and breeding signal all come from how you tagged your observations. The reference below is grouped the same way the picker is.

Phenology — Spring & summer cycle. The charts on `/journal` read these to draw the planting, bloom, and fruit windows.

Dormancy Break — buds visibly swelling or breaking; the plant is waking up after winter.

Leaf Out — new leaves emerging in spring.

Flowering — first flowers open. Each `Flowering` entry opens a new bloom cycle in the chart, so log it once per blooming (figs get two: breba and main crop).

Full Bloom — peak flowering, when the most blooms are open at once. Shows as the gold diamond on the bloom chart.

Finished Flowering — flowering wraps up for this cycle. Closes the bar on the chart.

Fruit Set — tiny formed fruits visible after pollination, before they ripen. An optional observation that's useful for fruit-set rate comparisons.

First Fruit — the first fruit ripens. Opens a new fruit cycle in the chart (parallel to how `Flowering` opens a bloom cycle).

Harvest — peak picking time / when picking is happening in earnest. Shows as the gold diamond on the fruit chart. For plants that produce continuously, log this on the busiest pick day; for one-shot fruiters (cherries, peaches) it's usually the same day as `First Fruit`.

Done Producing — no more fruit will come this season. Closes the bar on the fruit chart.

Seed Collection — when you collected seeds, useful for seed savers and breeders.

Leaf Drop — leaves fall; end of the growing year for deciduous plants.

Lifecycle — One-time events in the plant's life.

Sowing — when you put seeds in soil. Opens a planting cycle on the chart; a later `Planting` entry on the same plant closes it as a bar showing the seedling-to-garden window.

Planting — when you put the plant in its growing spot (either planted out from sowing, or transplanted from a nursery). Asks for sun exposure, soil type, and container so future you can compare conditions across plants. Standalone plantings (no sowing) render as their own dot on the planting chart.

Germination — when seeds sprout.

Grafting — when you graft this plant onto rootstock, or graft a scion onto it.

Propagation — when you took cuttings or made divisions from this plant.

Care — Things you did to the plant. Log these when they're worth remembering: a deep watering during drought, a hard prune, a specific fertilizer treatment.

Watering — irrigation events worth noting (not every routine watering).

Pruning — what you removed and why.

Fertilizing — what you fed and how much.

Repotting — for container plants, when you moved up a size or refreshed the medium.

Stress — Negative observations are signal too. These are how Ohtli surfaces "what didn't work" for other growers in conditions like yours.

Disease — visible disease symptoms (rust, mildew, blight, leaf spot, etc.).

Pest — pest activity or damage. A pattern of pest entries across growers in a region is exactly the kind of signal Ohtli is built to surface.

Cold Damage — frost or freeze damage. Asks for the temperature so the data is comparable.

Heat Damage — sunburn, wilting, leaf scorch from heat.

Drought Stress — water-stress symptoms.

Observation — General-purpose data.

Weight — log fruit weights or harvest totals; built-in unit picker (g, kg, oz, lb).

Measurement — log dimensions (plant height, leaf length, fruit diameter, etc.).

Media — a photo or video without other context.

Other — catch-all for anything else worth noting.

Terminal — End of your relationship with the plant. These also fire from the entity's "I don't grow this anymore" button.

Death — the plant died. Asks for a cause (disease, pests, cold, drought, heat, old age, unknown, other).

Culled — you intentionally removed it. Asks for a reason (bad flavor, low yield, disease susceptible, weak growth, no fruit set, cracking, bolted too fast, pest damage, or other). These reasons aggregate into breeding signal.

Lost — you lost track of the plant (couldn't find it, got moved, stolen).

Stopped Growing — you stopped growing it for non-judgment reasons (gave it away, created it on accident, other).

Your journal page shows all entries in a timeline view. Each entry displays the entity it belongs to, the observation type, date, notes, and any photos.

Section nav. The public Journal page (`/journal/...`) splits views into sections — Highlights, Entries, Seasons (every phenology event on one calendar), Planting Timing (sowing through planted out), Bloom Timing, Harvest Timing, Losses, Photos, and Videos. On desktop these live in a sidebar on the left; on mobile they're a sticky horizontal pill-tab strip under the page header so the section list is always visible.

Sidebar filters and sort. The Journal page in your dashboard has a sidebar that lets you filter entries by entity, by entry type, by visibility (public / private), and by date range. You can also sort by newest, oldest, or most recently edited. Filter and sort state is reflected in the URL — bookmark or share a view, or come back to it from the browser back button. The same UX is mirrored on the dashboard Entities list.

You can edit or delete any of your own journal entries at any time.