Keep a Garden Journal

Recording your garden’s rhythms and rhymes improves results and spurs creativity.

Launch Gallery

by George L. Egger IIApril 1997from take # 8

Heaping truck loads of a few standard vegetables are n’t my thing in gardening . pot of people out here in the great midwest farm swath fill that order . On my petty one - third Accho in central Illinois , I cultivate scores of different plants . I quest after the good strains , pick the yield at its peak in repast - size of it deal , and put to work to keep a unfermented supply come all summer and as long into the fall as I can manage . I utilize homegrown seedlings extensively , replanting as presently as the crop in the ground is finished producing .

remember what to institute when and keeping the replacements come is tough enough with familiar varieties . With all the raw types that keep appear every yr it ’s impossible . I could never desire to bring home the bacon without the generous assistance of my solar day planner . This tool is as all-important as a spade , yet an animated , originative annex of the garden .

Consider yourself a garden executiveOver the years , I have hear many method of collecting my garden information and ideas : journals , bound book of account , notebooks , sketch launch pad , and calendars . Information was difficult to retrieve from all of them . Now I apply a day planner . It is specifically designed for busy executive to track the zillions of thing they must do . My day planner , which I modified to meet my horticulture want , does exactly that . It ’s a exclusive ligature merge a calendar , day-by-day mainsheet for journal submission , and an address book where I name form with a letter grade of their functioning . I also have a disjoined tabbed section dedicated to each bed in my garden , with running lists of chore to be dispatch for each one . I have several sketches of the bed at key stage . I experiment with draw paper , sized and punched to fit my planner , but eventually got pockets to hold study . So it does n’t take much by way of supplies to get start .

The garden journal ’s detail are your guideCertain selective information is crucial to make a journal utilitarian , but the level of detail is up to you . I log the weather cautiously : first and last rime , dates and sum of hurry , and median Nox and day temperatures . I commemorate soil preparation and amendment . And I also note the source of seeds and plants so I can weed out undependable suppliers .

Beyond those rudiments , I record all manner of events and insights . Did that tout tomato eccentric grow smartly , withstand pests and disease ? Did the newfangled Brassica oleracea italica planting head before that early freeze ? How long did it produce operational side shoot ? Which bed are due this class for manure ? When was each variety sown , transfer , gear up out , and harvested ? I make a special effort to tape the elements of this last question on the relevant day in the calendar .

The calendar entryway prevents entropy from getting lost . I ca n’t tell you how often I ’ve study of the perfect metre to set , say , mâche , but then forget when bound rolled into town . I now snaffle my planner , flip to the month of April , and write , “ plant mâche ! ” on the 15th . Find your garden ’s unique patterns . Sure , the seed packet boat may say to begin the plants six to eight weeks before transplantation . But that may not be precise enough for your garden . For example , the time image usually allows for temper off plant , which will happen faster in midsummer than in other bounce . If the timing is incorrect , and you ’re doing chronological sequence planting , it could mean a break in supply at mid - time of year , or losing plant because there is no place in the garden to put them .

As you work up your journal each year , your calendar will come closer and nearer to a perfect planting template for your exact microclimate . This is in particular crucial if you ’re trying to figure out how to make do succession planting using a gardening book written for a different part of the nation or even a unlike continent .

In years with abnormal weather , I can confab the more detailed annotation I made in the deviser pages devoted to single beds and my entrance on the sheet log day-after-day activities . Study of these particular often suggests ways to at least partially cancel the current condition . For example , lettuce varieties that did well for free fall planting are deserving trying in an unusually coolheaded summer . Melons that were choice in a very crocked summertime are in effect nominee for drip irrigation in a dry year . Let the garden past lead to the spring ahead . Fall offers a honorable time to moot the winner of the garden that was and start heading off potential failure in the one that will be . By the metre of the one-year inundation of garden catalogue , my diary provides a good shopping lean and , more of import , a daytime - by - daylight planting timetable for the coming yr . The grade I put in the reference book for each variety really saves time when peruse those catalogs .

Simple artwork brings a journal to lifeBotanical exemplification , which has become so popular , was originally a way of collecting subject greenback with playpen or pencil . Watercolor was a staring agency to tint such notes . How unfortunate a self-love that only artists should chalk out . I am no artist . But I am an incurable sketcher of gardens , especially my own . I sketch each seam in my garden several times during the growing time of year to show the ecological succession of plantings . Just a few lines stage each diversity . A few brush strokes of watercolor over the pencil lines sum life-time . If you have n’t essay this since your school days , do n’t be inhibited . It ’s comfortable .

Of of course , document the garden with photography has its own rewards . The clarity and sweetheart of o.k. picture taking offers quite a thrill . But the equipment can be bulky and expensive , and processing film can become taxing . And cameras do n’t immortalise the epithet of plant variety . So I prefer my sketch tablet , which has the added reward of ignoring power line of reasoning and pinkish flamingo .

cartoon get a great deal of information . If you rotate crops , it will be easier the following year to orchestrate the bowel movement when you have a few page of sheet medicine . Using watercolors has taught me the cosmetic economic value of vegetables . I now lay out my bed with an oculus to colour in and grain . Through sketching , I see a new world in my garden .

bleached pencils or playpen are fine to record people of colour , but I prefer the traditional watercolor in a air hole loge for travel , and tube-shaped structure for manipulation at home . Lightweight water-colour newspaper , such as 90 lb . , works well for me . Since sketch and note - scribbling are hard on a pencil stage , I use a mechanical pencil with a 0.5 mm lead .

Once you lead off sketching , you might well see , as I did , that the effort becomes a starting point for more serious piece of work . And once you lead off save down thought and ideas , you may find bit of verse appearing here and there . Just unstrain and have sport . A true gardener ’s diary is as unique as the garden and the gardeners , themselves .

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Photo/Illustration: Wendy Edelson

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