Garden journal prompts
A garden journal is worth more every year you keep it, because it turns a hunch into a record. Dates, weather, and what failed are the three things next spring will want and this spring will not remember.
How to use these
Date everything and write the weather even when nothing happened. The failures are the most useful entries you will keep.
The record, dated
The dull half, and the half that pays. Next March will want a date and a variety name, not a description of how the bed looked.
- What did you plant today, where, and from what source?
- What was the weather, and what has this week been like overall?
- What is the soil like where you dug today?
- What did you move, prune, or take out?
- What did you water, feed, or leave alone this week?
- When did it last rain properly, and how deep did it go?
- What first and last frost dates are you working to this year?
- What did you spend on the garden this month, and on what?
What is happening out there
Written standing up, usually. These are the entries that make you look properly rather than glance.
- What is up, and how far ahead or behind last year is it?
- What is struggling, and what do you think is causing it?
- What is flowering right now, and what is it drawing in?
- What did you harvest, and how much?
- What did you notice today that you would not have noticed last year?
- What is eating something, and what have you actually seen doing it?
- Which bed gets the light you thought it did, and which one does not?
- What has seeded itself somewhere you did not put it?
The end of the season, and next year
The set worth doing in October while it is fresh, because in March you will remember the successes and none of the reasons.
- What failed this season, and what would you try instead?
- What do you want more of next year?
- What did the garden give you today that had nothing to do with plants?
- What are you putting to bed this week, and what is staying in the ground?
- What seed did you save, and from which plant exactly?
- Which variety earned its space, and which one did not?
- What job would next spring thank you for doing now?
- What did you learn this year that you would tell someone starting a first bed?
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