GARDEN RECORD KEEPING

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Succession Planting: Like to maximize your space—or keep your produce from all coming in at once—by creating an orderly progression of crops?

Fertilizer Records: What compost and soil amendments have you been using? How much? Where? Have they helped?

Garden Areas: Are some sections of your plot drier, wetter, colder, etc., than others? Which crops do best in which areas?

Different Growing Techniques: Do raised beds work better for you than rows? Does mulching help some (or all) of your crops? Which companion—planting combinations work? Does planting at different soil temperatures—or by the moon—have an effect?

Costs: How much have you invested in fertilizers, tools, seed, labor, etc.? (Such records are essential if you hope to do any market gardening.)

Etcetera: Greenhouse culture, seed inventories, water use—your record goals are limited only by your needs and imagination!

METHODS TO THE MADNESS

Just as you'll develop your own specific record—keeping goals, you'll also have to develop your own record—keeping methods—to discover the note-taking system that will work best for you and that you'll be most likely to stick with. Here are some ideas from my own experience to help get you started.

The Notebook: The classic tool for the job. A notebook is easily portable and highly adaptable to individual purposes. Some folks recommend not using a three-ring binder notebook—they say if you can take a page out and lose it, you will! I like to live dangerously, though, in exchange for the luxury of shifting pages around at will and of adding graph paper for charts.

Each year, I draw my garden outline on a notebook page and staple two sheets of tracing paper over it. I write down my first plantings on the original page. Then on the first sheet of tracing paper, I record the harvest date of the initial crops and the next plantings that went in. The second tracing sheet is used for any third crops. This way I can see at a glance what plants I grew in each bed.

Another advantage to a binder notebook is that you can add three-holed manila folders to it. You'll be surprised what you can stash in these: photographs of your garden, copies of useful articles, the information on empty seed packets, etc. (I've even been known to tuck away a bluebird feather or autumn leaf in mine.) You can label folders by the vegetable or by the month.

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