I've Got a Plan

When it comes to gardening, I've tried all different ways of keeping track of what I've planted where, and when things came up, and what eventually died or did extremely well.  I've tried notebooks.  I've tried fancy shmancy garden journals.  I've tried keeping an Excel file on my computer.  There was a time that I even tried keeping a time-lapse photo-journal, which started off great (if very snap-happy) and wound up going the way of all the rest:  never finished, never updated, never looked at again until I came across it three years later and chucked it in the bin.

Not any more.  I am breaking the cycle, dang it.

This year, I've started a binder filled with all sorts of goodies to pique my interest, and hopefully keep me motivated to actually track the garden's progress.  I invested in some nifty colorful dividers, that have pockets on them --pockets!-- where I can cram everything from copies of my seed order sheets to tags from various plants or cut-out informational blurbs from gardening catalogs. There's even a write-on tab on each divider, where I can label them by year.  In each yearly section, there is a wodge of graph paper, where I can keep notes, or draw out my nefarious planting schemes, like on this plan:



Pretty neat, huh?  I have to say that sometimes, I even impress myself.

I have a whole series of these "maps" to my gardens, which is really helping me to remember which plants/seeds go where, into which garden, and beside whatever else will live in that particular bed.  I'm penciling in any changes as they go into the ground, which is something I have been fairly lacksidaisical about in the past.  Now, when stuff sprouts, I can look back and say "oh yeah, that's the Munchenweisen radish" instead of scratching my head and wondering what the heck it might be.  While having a mystery until harvest can be entertaining, it is nice to know a beet versus a turnip from time to time.

Now, to only have time and energy to get out there and put this plan into action...