Keeping a Gardening Journal

Chances are, if you’ve visited a garden center in early spring, you’ve seen one. Nestled amongst seed packets and bags of plant food, there it was: a garden journal. Now, if your idea of a garden is hanging a tomato plant upside down in a bucket on your front porch, then throwing it out in mid-July for lack of water, then a garden journal probably isn’t for you. However, any fairly serious gardener could benefit from keeping a simple journal. They are useful for recording and remembering several important pieces of information that will make the next growing season even more bountiful. Consider keeping track of the following items (And use a cheap notebook; there’s no need to spend $15 on a journal):

The Weather Outside is Frightful

There’s no need to make this a Farmer’s Almanac. Just keep track of when the last frost of the spring and first frost of the fall are each year. Do this for a few years and you should gain a pretty good idea of when it is safe to plant and when your plants will begin to develop goose bumps.

From Seed to Salad

Keep track of when you started your plants and when you began to harvest them. Seed packets give you a general idea, but your local climate, soil, rainfall, and many other factors will determine how long it takes your plants to produce. This will help you plan your garden better, as you’ll know what plants need to be started indoors earlier, and which ones can be directly seeded.

Crop Circles

Crop rotation is not just for large-scale farmers with massive tractors. Even the backyard gardener can benefit from planting things in a different place each year. Using small plots can really help with planning. Use a journal to draw a map of your garden each year, so you can vary things the next year. Tomatoes and peppers are two commonly grown plants that should not grow in the same place year after year because they diminish the soil.

Which Plants Put Out?

If you’re really dedicated (or insane) you can keep track of how much each plant yields. This information might seem completely useless, but imagine standing in the grocery aisle and striking up a conversation: “The Roma tomato plant in the third row of my garden has produced 16 tomatoes since last week!” That might be a bit over the top, but you can at least keep track of any plants that did really poorly or seemed to produce exceptionally well.

So along with starting seeds, tilling, planting, weeding, and watering, you can now add keeping a garden journal to your list of gardening activities. The information you collect might save you a few headaches and help your garden be more bountiful. And if the Internal Revenue Service decides to audit your garden, you’ll have records to show them!