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Your Garden Journal is Forever

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted, including any photos, by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

All the experts tell us to keep a garden journal, it's critical to your overall success and sense of accomplishment. I've probably said something like that myself.

I keep a garden journal but I just go ahead and keep it the way that suits me. To rephrase that, let's just say that each year I try to keep a garden journal. I start out with great enthusiasm and list all the seeds I've started, how long they took to germinate and at roughly what temperature I kept them; how fast they needed to be pricked out to individual pots or cell packs and then how soon I was able to move them to the cold frame for conditioning and then finally plant them in the garden. Those are important issues and I refer back to my notes year after year.

In years when I plant trees, I record that. Trees last a long time, certainly longer than my memory. They deserve some ceremony and the recording is a rite. Was that '94 or '96 we planted that cherry? Who sold us that no-good suckering blankety blank crabapple way back when? A person could stay awake at night wondering which red maple cultivar we planted, the tall bare root one that has never grown well. Let's not do that again!

The entries stop right about the time I am frantically transplanting things into the garden in that wonderful mad rush of spring. "I'll come back tuit." Well, we've seen the long term track record. Not likely.

The records pick up again at bulb planting time in the fall to list where I planted what. This record is a supplement to the "hair pin" style labels from the Paw Paw label company that I like to use to mark a patch of newly planted bulbs. I record the bulb source, too, since I have so much time in the fall.

I am somewhat consistent about recording the first dates for frost, one for the first light frost that hits the frost pocket in the lower end of my yard and then the second for the killing frost that kills tender plants on my patio outright. Then there is another long silence until the seeds start up again.