Gardening: Time to start writing

Most of the vegetable garden should be planted by now. The exception might be basil, which needs warm temperatures and soil to grow well.

Getting the garden ready and then getting the garden planted is always a rush from one deadline to another. You will have a couple of weeks before the weeds start popping up. Now is a good time to get your garden journal caught up, or start one.

For many gardeners, a garden journal is a touchstone for all they do in the garden. Not only do they record planting and harvest dates, weather conditions and yields, a journal is a place to note your successes, new ideas and even failures. If kept over many years, they are a record of the changes that have occurred. What was the last frost date several years ago compared to this year? When was the last time you planted onions in a bed so you can plan your crop rotations?

Garden journals come in many shapes, sizes and formats. They can be a simple pocket calendar in which you write down what you are growing, planting and harvest dates. I keep one of these in my garden cupboard where it is easy to reach. An 8-inch spiral notebook has big enough pages to lay out your beds for crop rotation and make notes as you go. Come the winter planning season, it’s easy to thumb through the pages and lay out next year’s garden.

Some people get really fancy with their journals. Not only do they record their gardening information, they create drawings of birds and animals that visit the garden or sketch out new landscaping ideas. The really creative folks add watercolor drawings to the pages.

For kids, keeping a garden journal is like staying in school during the summer. They can write down what they did each day, draw pictures, and write stories about what they are seeing. When they do this, they are covering some key classroom learning experiences, such as writing and language, art, science and observation and interpretation skills.

In the age of digital media, keeping a journal can be as simple as taking your tablet or phone into the garden and recording pictures and videos of your activities. These can then be edited into a document or built into a video platform for the web. Because notes can be added to photos, it’s easy to quickly update a day’s worth of gardening in a matter of minutes. The GPS function can even help you record where you planted a new plant, so you don’t dig into it next spring.

A word of warning here: Don’t put your device down and pick up a hose. Devices don’t like water and are expensive to replace.