Gardening Tips and Highlights

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Garden journaling

how-to’s            

by Christine Yesko

As a passionate gardener I believe that one of the keys to success is keeping records of your gardening endeavors.  To this end, a fun and useful winter activity is to start a garden journal.

A garden journal is your own personal diary of what happens in your garden, starting with the planning in January through putting your garden to bed in October.  It provides a place to keep together all information, plans, and notes about your garden.  Your journal can be as simple as a composition book or as elaborate as a creative scrapbooking endeavor.

Begin by choosing the type of journal that would best work for you.  Consider if you want to record simple details or your gardening story.

For simple details, you can use notebook paper, a composition book, or notecards.  Just be sure to date each page or card. A monthly calendar has large squares for each day and each week, for you to write detailed notes and to record seed-starting activities. If you want more room to write, there are some beautiful garden journals available in bookstores.  They often contain graphs for sketching and planning, charts for recording information like flower purchases and blooming times. Using a computer is a fast way to record what is going on in your garden; it is faster than writing by hand.  You can add digital photographs right into the document, size them to meet your needs, and easily delete and replace them.

Try to write something each day and month, remembering to include the date in each entry.  Save your entries and print them when you have completed a year.  Keep the printed pages in a three-ring binder for future reference.  You can also save plant tags to remember plant names, plus taking a photo of the plant can be added to the journal.

Keep vegetable garden information: As new seed catalogs arrive, begin by making an inventory of the seeds you have on hand and which ones you need to order.  Draw a rough sketch of your landscape bed and draw places where future vegetables and flowers will be planted.

Weather occurrences, as they happen like first and last frost dates, snow arrival dates all help for the future.

Garden expenses help you keep track, and recording receipts with purchase dates help if you need to contact nurseries for replacements.

 

Garden journals are an invaluable reference to review at the end of the year. Keeping a garden journal can give you a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.  Choose a method of journaling that suits you. Have fun and happy journaling.

 

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