Last year, I ran out of space by July and was frustrated because I know with better planning I could grow all that I want to grow. Weekly garden to-do lists – I am creating a form that is specific to my gardens, incorporating my vegetable garden, my medicinal herb garden, and my new project, my food forest. I start all of my vegetables by seed and try to sow several additional plantings of vegetables (called successive or staggered sowing) to extend my growing season into late fall. I decided to keep it simple and chose the following: The first thing I did was to decide what kinds of recordkeeping tools I wanted and would actually use. And plans to put up my mini-tunnels on my raised beds so I could extend my growing season disappeared under the pressures of harvest and work. I sowed seeds for my fall crops too late. I mapped out my plantings AFTER I planted. Last year, I used a clipboard with a spreadsheet and blank paper that I would scribble some notes on and then toss them on my desk to deal with later. Map of garden plantings including staggered planting overlays and yearly rotation.Seasonal, monthly, and weekly garden to-do lists & calendar.There are many “opportunities” to collect data about your garden: When I have purchased garden planners and journals, I discovered that I really wasn’t interested in some of the included worksheets. Some do none while seed savers and home vegetable breeders keep meticulously detailed records. Gardeners vary widely in the type of planning and record-keeping they do. Gardening can be an emotional rollercoaster at times. The journal is the place to record varieties that did well in your garden, what pests showed up and what you did to distract or eliminate them, weather notes, the effects of excessive heat or rain, the date of the early frost that killed your unripened tomatoes, and the occasional reflection of gratitude, joy, pride, and frustration that you experience as you tend to your garden. Keeping a journal about your garden’s progress, pests and problems is the best way to grow as a gardener.
#Garden planner diary professional#
I view my garden work as a form of income since I grow a considerable amount of food and herbs so I need to utilize the same tools like weekly and daily to-do lists that I use for my professional and personal projects. Weekly to-do lists for garden tasks keep you committed to the garden.Planning from the comfort of your favorite chair in January allows you to be specific and detailed and blend garden management into your daily life when it is filled with the business of sowing, transplanting, and harvesting. Monthly calendars allow you to plan for sowing, transplanting, and harvesting.For me this is important: seed catalogs are dangerously enticing, and I often order more seeds and varieties that I can actually plant in one season. Planning a vegetable garden with a map (or multiple maps) allows you to see visually what and where you can grow throughout the season.For me, it was about the lack of organization and having everything in place so that I could develop the habit.īut first, let’s talk about the benefits of a garden planner and journal. I also reflected on what hinders my development of the simple habit of keeping garden planning and journal. I thought a lot about what information I wanted to record, how I would record it, and how the planner and journal could be useful every week of the season as well as afterward in the month of January when I am dreaming about my next summer garden.
But this year is different: as part of one of my year-long projects, I have committed to creating and using a garden planner and journal system that is specific to my garden and my personal, ahem, challenges. In the dark days of winter, I lament my absence of notes, relying on my mid-life brain to recall things that quite frankly, it can’t.
But usually around June, I have abandoned my efforts to keep records. I have tried all kinds of planners: purchased and self-made, simple and complex, paper, and digital. I have a confession: I have failed miserably at this important task. At least, that’s what all the experts say. foot garden like me keeping a garden planner and journal is one of the best investments you can make. Whether you have a container garden on your patio or a 4000 sq.
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