Gardening with Nature's Crossroads

Guest post by Jami Scholl, My Edible Eden LLC

July seems an odd time to begin keeping a garden journal. Just as tomatoes are beginning to ripen on the vine, a few pickings of green beans have already been eaten for dinner, and the lettuces, peas and spinach seem a distant memory; we tend to think only about this harvest, rather than keeping records for next year. How boring and tedious to keep records!

How boring is it to peer into the cabbages (or other vegetable or fruit) to see evidence of some creature’s very full belly. The bane of my garden experiences this year is that of the cabbage moth and their progeny: holes are found in the cabbages, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli. Since my yard gets little sun, these are some vegetables I can grow successfully… that is, as successfully as I can control the defoliating insect pests. What to do? I could easily go back to any of my reference books, but I think, what steps did I take when I had this problem in the past?

I am a lazy gardener. And I hate shopping. I garden not just to provide healthy nutrient dense foods for my family, but when I grow my own food all I have to do is step outside my door to find what will be for dinner. An undying wish I have is that anything I need will simply appear just as soon as I realize I need it. I wave my hand and Voila! It appears before me! (And as unrealistic as this seems, I am still wishing to find a new pair of Merrell hiking boots size 8 ½ at the foot of my bed each morning when I wake.) As for this wish for the cabbage moths to stop eating holes in all my cruciferous vegetables, what would I wish for? What product do I want to have sitting on the counter next to my backdoor, with step-by-step instructions for use? Hmmm, what did I do last year? I remember I grew red cabbages and broccoli raab. Green worms are easy to see on red cabbages, and the broccoli raab did not have insect pests. What about the year before? I didn’t grow any cruciferous vegetables for the previous three years.

It is at this moment that I think about pulling out my reference garden books, and then my previous years of journals. Although my memory does not serve up the details of information I need to immediately begin taking steps out my door to dust or spray, it does remember that about five years ago I had a similar problem when I lived in a different location. I look for this approximate journal year, taking 2005 off the book shelf, where I notice an entry about cabbage worms, or rather, holes in the cabbages. The steps I took in order to save the harvest in subsequent entries throughout the year are in subsequent journal entries. I see what worked well, what worked a little bit, and what did not work at all. I read the concerns I had and a “note to self” for future years. (“Note to self – try growing red cabbage for its red color and the tightness of the leaves. Make sure the soil is amended better.”)

Over the years I have tried a few different types of garden journals, but always came back to the ones I made myself out of a blank calendar, notebook paper with photos taped to it and graph paper mapping out what I planted where. As I learned more about gardening I began crop rotations, created my own compost and compost teas, and amended the soil with leaves, manures, rock powders, and other natural materials. This worked fine most of the time, but as I carried paper, books, pens and pencils outside or used at the kitchen table (a.k.a. potting bench) things didn’t always go so smoothly. Pencil smudged on plastic tags or faded over time in some notebooks. Other times it was ink that smeared.  I learned that journaling is only as good as the materials, just as proper plant selection is just as important as proper care of the plant. I am a firm believer that a garden journal must be functional in order to be a vessel for personal knowledge readily available for later use.  This is why I created my own, titling it A Gardener’s Calendar & Journal.

What type of journal is best for you? This depends upon your own personal way of working and thinking.  You will find that even a hodge-podge random lot of entries over the years will be beneficial to carry the memory back, or at least not leave you feeling a novice in the backyard. Beware of the post-it note syndrome! These little things are quite handy, but will quickly lose their stickiness with the tiniest of dirt and will fall to the floor unnoticed. I have been known to sweep up little post-it notes from the corner of the kitchen, find them stuck to my broom, pick it off, read it, then joyfully skip to my journal to tape it in. And if I do not tape it in immediately, it is likely that the same post-it note may be swept up again from a different corner of my house after being brushed off a countertop, this time not sticking to anything, begging to be read…to be saved knowledge!  On a more serious note, basic data will change from year to year such as temperature or rainfall amounts. After many years of record keeping you will be able to look back to see trends and fluctuations. This kind of information can be as standard as first and last frost dates or more specialized, such as tomato blight. Through keeping accurate records you may be able to anticipate conditions that spread fungus, or a myriad of other things, such as the timing of lifecycles of specific insects.

Perhaps you are one who moves from place to place, questioning whether journaling will still be beneficial to you. It will. You will be able to refer back to different climates or soil types then adjust this knowledge for where you are now living. All knowledge is useful as it will help you adjust to climactic changes. Whether small changes of your own creation as you begin to learn and play around with micro-climates, or larger ones of global proportion. This is something that can be experimented with on a patio or yard. Sometimes it is the smaller spaces which are easiest to work with, experiencing first-hand how incremental changes in the environment can have major impacts on the health and vigour of your plants, and the quality, quantity and duration of harvest. All of this information can be written down, built upon as a story, calculated as data tables or utilized in whatever manner suits your own needs… July is the perfect time to begin your garden journal!

You can find more information about My Edible Eden’s A Gardener’s Calendar and Journal on the website www.MyEdibleEden.net

Jami Scholl is an edible landscaping and  garden designer from My Edible Eden, LLC.  She offers design consultations, educational programs, permaculture workshops, and a variety of garden planning tools such as her excellent gardener’s calendar and journal.

Tags: garden, Jami Scholl, journal