One of her tips back in 2000 was to have a garden journal. I didn't get it: write down what I was doing in the yard? After a long day when dinner needed to be on the table, my nails were dark brown with dirt and my back ached from bending, I was supposed to pull out a notebook and write about my day? Seriously??
Silly me, I was reverting back to high school and my teenage diary, full of dreams, disappointments and crushed feelings. But Liz was talking about a journal of happy successes and insightful failures with a calendar to mark the progress. And a chart of what exactly went where.
I was finally convinced - I need to use a calendar to note the last frost of the spring and the first frost of the fall, where I planted the veggies each year (to avoid any veggie family diseases), where I bought the seeds I started (and when I started them), and the names of the perennials in the yard.
That last one was a long time coming - I was always sure I'd remember (how could I forget?) the name of the fantastic sagebrush-looking plant I put in next to the juniper, if the bland, leafy shrub in the raised bed that doesn't have flowers (yet) is just a huge weed, or the type of clematis behind the greenhouse (early pruning variety? late pruning variety??). I eventually figured out what each was by visiting nurseries and online catalogs: a Powis Castle Artemisia, a Maltese Cross plant, and an early pruning Clematis. Too much work for every mystery shrub in the yard! I definitely needed a plan.
So - where to begin? With little effort, I've found a boatload of great ways to make the journal writing fun (I've always been a pretty pen, fancy paper kind of person and now I'm a happy computer geek).
I started with a journal designed especially for gardeners - graph paper pages, a calendar, a place to make lists. It was compact and I kept it near my chair for daily record-keeping. But I got ambitious pretty quickly and needed a 3-ring binder to add maintenance comments (every May - Beat The Cheat Grass, fertilize the summer annuals every month), create my plant wish list (another apple tree? a blue clematis to grow beside the red one?), and sketch out project ideas (a pretty fence for the veggie garden, a paver design in the Secret Garden).
Once I started adding photos to the calendar (Is the Allium skimpier than last year? Did the Silver Lace Vine bloom so much last summer?), I realized I needed a techie upgrade. My tablet can go with me now (in a plastic bag as insurance against water damage) but a house-bound computer could serve as well. I can use either an online program or adapt my own spreadsheet and word processing programs to record everything I need. Some of the packaged programs look interesting for anyone who likes to share garden experiences and get advice online. There's also a wealth of garden journals in every bookstore and a few online programs for anyone who doesn't want to design a journal from scratch.
To get you started, I've listed a few sites that can show you what's available:
http://www.daru.com/Garden/Garden_Tracker_Worksheets.htm
http://www.daru.com/Garden/Garden_Tracker_Worksheets.htm
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