Reflecting On Your Summer Garden with a Garden Journal
As the warmer months draw to a close, it’s the time of year when we reflect on our summer gardens. What worked, and what didn’t do so well?
Starting a Garden Journal
A great way to keep track of our successes and experiences throughout the gardening season is to keep a garden journal. Some may say garden journals are just for beginners, but I think they can be for all of us.
Journals can be an amazing tool to grow as a gardener, providing a way to record our thoughts and what we learned by putting them into practice. As we continue to engage in the journaling process growing season after growing season, we create a cycle of success.
A garden journal doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it does have to be personal. The goal is to write and record throughout the season, so make it easy for yourself! Are you a digital note taker, or do you prefer pen and a pad? You can buy a ready-made published journal, with topics and an outline, and just fill in the blanks, or you can simply grab your favorite notebook or pad of paper.
What to Include in Your Garden Journal
There are few pieces of information that are important for you to record. These include important dates, such as:
The last frost date in the spring and the first frost date in the fall
The date you start seeds or transplant your plants outside
The date of your first harvest for different crops
When you notice pest issues or significant weather changes
Creating sections in your journal can make it easier to keep track of what you learned, the techniques you used, or the milestones you accomplished as a gardener. For example:
Your seeds or plants, including what kinds of plants you have and how many days to harvest
Insects
Fertilizers you used and how you used them
Crop rotation
What you’ll plant or not plant next year
Start Now
You can start using your journal in the fall or winter by writing down plans for your garden, such as what you want to grow and where in your garden you plan to grow it. You also can predetermine when to plant more to grow in succession or when you should rid your garden of a particular plant and prepare for another growing climate. The hard part about this is sticking to the garden plan!
Make It Fun!
Creating a garden journal can be fun, too. Draw pictures of insects or pests and create funny captions. Draw facial expressions of how experiences made you feel, like how you felt coming into the garden versus how you felt leaving it.
A garden journal can be basic, or it can be in-depth. Your journal doesn’t have to be perfectly structured if you don’t want it to be. It doesn’t have to look like an excel spreadsheet—unless spreadsheets make you happy! The point is to keep track of your goals and your expectations, the bumps along the way, and your successes.
Using a garden journal can help you stay on track of your goals throughout the growing season. It can become a road map to meet your gardening expectations and to chronicle your growth as a gardener. I encourage you to give it a try!