Karen of www.GardenChick.com offers these ideas for filling your a garden journal:
- * Pictures of gardens you like
- * Results of soil tests
- * Seed starting dates, planting times, and harvesting time for your plants
- * Date of first and last frost for your area
- * Lunar phases for “planting by the moon”
- * A calendar for planning your plantings
- * Catalogs
- * Plants you want in your garden and their soil, sun, and water requirements
- * A diagram of your garden with each row labeled as to what you planted. This will help with crop rotation, and companion planting
- * Diagram of individual beds with plantings labeled. (Many plants die back, and you can’t remember what that is coming up next spring!)
- * Pictures of garden art, sheds, garden décor that you like and where you can purchase them.
- * Upcoming garden shows and what you want to look for/purchase.
- * The weather. Was it too hot, too dry, too wet, and how did that affect your plants?
- * Recipes for your harvest (will help you decide what you need to plant and what to do with all those peppers and tomatoes you will plant)
- * An envelope for receipts. My local garden center will replace a fruit tree, bush etc., within 3 years if it dies and you return with receipt and the dead plant.
- * Insects: The good, the bad, and the ugly, along with the birds and butterflies that visited your garden.
- * Before and after pictures are a must. The garden at 1 year, 3 years, etc.
- * Garden quotes, stickers, and of course, pictures of kids, grandkids, and pets.