Since my last post, I feel like I’ve been playing catch up since the beginning of the year. For those of you who have been keeping up, I had started working on a specialty Dungeon Master’s journal for a campaign that I want to run. Well the current campaign that we (myself included) are playing has been extended significantly so I can safely put this project on hold. For now. Naturally I will still want to work on it and world build and all the fun stuff but it’s not my primary focus at the moment.
That being said, one of the projects I wanted to start on last year but didn’t get to was to start a garden. I have the raised beds and I have done a little bit of the research to have the proper drainage and I have an idea of the plants I want to grow. However, I do know that gardening, more specifically, gardening successfully requires a lot of detail and skill and care. These are all skills that I don’t have when it comes to gardening.
So, what does this mean?
It may come as no surprise that this means I’m making a gardening journal to help me document the information I’m learning on this journey to build a successful vegetable garden for my family to enjoy. I want a journal where I can document information like how to care for the plants, when do they need to be watered, when do they need fertilization, when did I plant them, when did I transplant them, when where they ready for harvesting, what was the weather like each week, did they bolt, did they have a disease that needed to be addressed, what can i do better next year, and everything in between.
I have a lot to learn and it’s a lot to remember as someone who has not had a substantial garden in the past. The extent of my gardening history involves container gardening on a small scale in my backyard.
How am I going to do this?
I’m glad you asked! I have selected this gorgeous 8×8 square notebook from Archer & Olive from my stash and will be using this to set up my gardening journal. I’ll have a full set up video on Youtube soon and will be posting images and flip thrus on Instagram as well. This journal, like many others, is meant to be a living record of this experience.
While a few of the spreads will be set up ahead of time, I do plan on making spreads for each individual plant over the next few months as well. I want to document my journey with trying to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables and the lessons I learn along the way.
Now then, ready for the good stuff?
I started with brainstorming the types of data that I knew I would want to track and have available. I know there is a lot to learn about careing for all the fruits and vegetables I want to grow.
Garden Goals
This was a layout I absolutely needed to have in this journal. In my opinion, this is the centerpiece of creating this journal and so I wanted to have this be first in the lineup. My intent for this is to document the objectives I want to achieve with my garden for this first year. These are goals like learning how to water and transplant and fertilize and get a better understanding of the basics of gardening.
Gardening Terms
As i’ve watched some youtube videos on gardening and setting up a raised bed, I’ve started hearing gardening terms that I don’t fully understand. I want to record these words so that I can refer back to them later. I don’t anticipate learning all of the terms by heart and remembering them from this year to next year. However, If I have them written down in my gardening journal, I can refresh my memory next season and the season after that and the one after that.
How are the beds set up
One surprising thing I’ve learned in researching raised garden beds is that they are not just dirt. There are actually layers for irrigation, natural minerals, etc. The best that I’ve been able to determine is that the layers are largely subjective. I’ve seen garden beds that have layers of rocks, wood, hay and grass clippings, landscaping fabric, compost, you name it, it’s out there. I wanted to document how I decided that my beds will be set up in my journal because I know I will not remember otherwise when it comes time to set up beds in the future.
Weather Info
We always look back on history with rose colored glasses and where I live, summers can be either relentlessly hot or cooler and rainy in the summers. And sometimes, we get both. And to say that the weather doesn’t have a big impact on the health and yield of the plants I’m growing is ridiculous. The goal for this spread is to document what the weather actually is each day so that if some plants do better or worse from one year to the next, I can start understanding why.
Plants I Want to Grow
This may seem like a pretty intuitive layout but I do feel its important to have a list of the plants I want to grow. It’s easy to fall into a rut and just do the same plants over and over and never really branch out. I want to document the plants that I want to grow so that I don’t forget some plants, so I can try out different varieties of plants, and change out some plants for others and maybe try out some new ones.
Companion Plants
One of the things I’ve learned over the years, a lot of plants “like” and “dislike” to be close other plants. I wanted to have a reference of these for the plants I will be growing this year. I wanted to have this available so that I can plan out my garden beds for optimal growth and plant happiness.
Planting Layout
The intent for this page is to plan out which plants (and how many) to plant where. I can set up the companion plants, make sure I leave room to stagger plants (like lettuce) where we want to have them available for harvest throughout a longer portion of the growing season rather than have everything ready for harvest all at once.
Seed Starting Calendar
For the last page of info to track, I wanted to document which plants are planted and when. While seed to germination and maturity is pretty well science throughout the gardening world, I wanted to be able to keep track of which plants I started on which dates. The goal is to be able to predict when they will be ripe enough to pick and, for those plants that being staggered, how many I can expect to pick from one week to the next.
What’s Next?
I’ll be slowly building individual plant pages as well for all the plants I will be growing this season. These will include info like watering needs, fertilizer schedules, yield rates, planting spacing, etc. I’ll be setting these up throughout the season and posting updates on Instagram and Youtube.
Leave a Reply