I am a planner. My planning is to the point where it almost drives my family crazy. I need to write everything down and follow a list to get tasks completed. I guess in the back of my mind if I don’t write it down I will forget it, whatever it may be, and never complete whatever I was supposed to complete.I am a big advocate for extending education of home vegetable gardening through reading articles on the subject, buying books or getting them from your local library, listening to podcasts and all of that good stuff. With all of that information in hand there is however one book, one piece of paper, your PDA or iPhone, or whatever you use to do this, that is more important than all of those and that is your garden plan.
I believe it is imperative and necessary to keep a garden plan. This will help you keep it organized, know what is planted where, which plants did well in one area so you know what to do the following season and so much more.
If you have been keeping up to date on your home vegetable gardening education then you know the importance of plant rotation. Your garden plan written in your gardening journal will help you keep track of what you planted this season so you do not plant the same ones the following year.
Your garden journal will also help you when you write down the seeds you purchased, who you purchased them from and how well they did. If they did great, which most do, then you can write that in. An example would be, “I bought tomato seeds from the xyz company on {some date}, planted 5 of them and four successfully germinated into healthy plants.”
How you organize your thoughts is up to you. You can put it in diary/journal form with a date then an entry next to that date, you can draw pictures, you can keep it like a goal oriented system where you write down what you are trying to achieve for the upcoming season and then write in whether it was a success or failure, and so on. The process is completely up to you but a very vital part of home vegetable gardening.
Now, what can you use as a journal? Again this is completely up to you. I use a binder with loose leaf paper in it so I can add to it as time goes by. When I come across something that I feel is important and can help others I will post it on my blog or website. Many people love the electronic age and through the help of their blackberry’s, iPhones, PDAs and other devices they can keep their home vegetable gardening journals that way.
You might be saying to yourself that you have been home vegetable gardening for many years and have never kept a journal and that you have been very successful at it. While all that is true, because my father an avid home vegetable gardener himself, keeping a journal will make you that much more successful. Your journal will give you the ability to keep track of things that worked, that didn’t work, which plants did better in which spot and so much more. Over time, if you don’t write this information down, you will forget.
Your home vegetable gardening journal will give you the ability to plan out a successful harvest for an upcoming growing season. If you put the time and effort in to keep this journal, you and your family can reap the benefits for years to come.
About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A guide to vegetable gardening for the rest of us. He can be reached at his wesbite: AveragePersonGardening.com where you can sign up for his free newsletter and he will send you a pack of vegetable seeds to get your home vegetable garden started.
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