Gardening Notebook

 

There seem to be several groups of people when it comes to gardening: Some seem to think it isn't any where near time to begin gardening, some are in the planning phase now and have already planted things.  

I am in the group of planning my garden now. It is a fun time of year! And over the last few years I have found that having a Gardening Notebook - is very helpful in the planning phase. 

There are great websites that you can make copies of - so you too, can have great gardening information in your gardening notebook. 

One of my favorite pages in my notebook - is something I was able to copy from www.almanac.com 

I was able to go in and put my zip code and it brought up dates for things to be planted. It even goes deeper than that - it tells if you sow indoors or sow directly. That is very important information to know. So I have several pages of the list of vegetables and when to plant. It is so much nicer than the sheets of paper that I added to my notebook several years ago- that has plant this 4 weeks before/after that last freeze. When you have that - then you have to get a calendar out and do a lot of figuring for each thing you want to plant. 

So spend a little time to gather great information for your Gardening Notebook - this will require a good amount of time to begin with - but just remember that in the future this notebook will come in handy and will shorten the amount of time you have to spend planning your garden. 

In this notebook - I will store the templates of my garden that I created this year. So next year - I will just have to make copies of those pages and then I can get busy with my plans. I will also have the pages from this years plantings - and so I can use those pages to help me decided what to do next year. Each new thing that you come up with to help with gardening will help you not only this year -but also in the future. 

The pages I have shown above show - a list of veggies and tells what plants are allies and what are foes. And then I have one that tells what plants like full light and what plans can handle partial shade - these things are helpful as well. Since some of my yard has more shades than others.

Keep the important information in your gardening notebook - like last frost date/ first frost date and garden zone. 

So this is the best time to be planning your garden. And you might also find it is the best time to start some plants indoors. I live in zone 8a. and so for me it is the time to start eggplant seeds indoors. 

These are the 2 varieties that I will be planting this year. 

So I bought this Ammo Can ( I think is the name of it) from Harbor Freight- I think it was about 4.99) 

I used cardstock paper to make my dividers for the months - and so I placed the seeds behind the month that I will be planting. And then I will putting the seeds in order of when to plant them each month. Each of these organization projects - not only make things easier for this year - but also easier in the future. 

I hope that this information is helpful to you during this planning phase of gardening. :O)