Journal of the Green
© Leda Meredith
Every second week of April, I mention that Spring is late this year. A glance at my gardening and foraging journal lets me know that the seasons are right on schedule, and it's just that I am antsy as usual. The journal also tells me that it is time to check for the Japanese Knotweed harvest (tender only for a few weeks), that it would be a waste of time to plant beans yet never mind the three-day warm spell, and that I should already have tomato and pepper seedlings going indoors.
What you want in a Journal of the Green is to be able to compare years at a glance. This indispensable tool can remind you when it is time for planting and collecting tasks, and help you upgrade your skills (e.g. "Note to Self: the brief cold spell in September doesn't mean it's time to yank out the tomatoes. So-and-so next door was still harvesting them into November.")
There are pricey garden journals available from publishers, but you can make a Journal of the Green easily and cheaply yourself. If you have a printer and a graphics program, you can come up with something quite decorative. You might even want to give copies to fellow appreciators of the Green! If not, simply purchase a binder notebook and fill it in by hand..
A useful format is four-years-per-view. You open the journal and see two columns per page for First Week of June. The pages have two vertical columns each with the year written in, for a four year total spread. So on the left hand page you are looking at the first week of June 2002 and 2003, for example, and on the right hand page you are looking at the first week of June 2004 and 2005. Turn the page and you'll find the second week of June for those same four years.
Under the date, you might want to break the columns down into headings for such categories as: Blooming, Harvested, Planted, Transplanted, Problems (bugs and diseases, etc.), Weather, Identified for Future Harvests (for wild harvests not yet in season), Notes (a catchall category to include whatever doesn't fit into the other categories). I especially recommend including Weather. This will give you a more accurate map of the first and last frost dates for your area than any Zone map in a gardening book.
In the back of your Journal of the Green, include a few blank pages for recipes, pressed flowers from the field (even if that field is your fire escape), daydreams about things you'd like to try growing or want to identify for foraging, and a contact sheet of resources (addresses, web sites, etc.) for plant and seed suppliers.
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