A Garden Diary

' Dear Diary, .......... '.  No, I am not the kind of person to document my life in a diary and I constantly neglect my Facebook account.  I also do not Twitter anyone when I am having sausages for tea.  So, why do I keep a garden diary?

Well, it is because I have never had a very good memory and I like to learn from my past garden successes and mistakes.  I envy members of the Food Garden Group who seem to have this enormous amount of knowledge in their heads and can reproduce it whenever needed.  Not me!

I have learnt to compensate for the lack of a good memory by writing things down and these days I write them down in my trusted garden diary spreadsheet.  Here is what it looks like:

My diary is a spreadsheet, and it is in order of Variety. To add a second line for brassicas I insert a line above potato and type the info on that line. I can sort all entries in order of Type or Date.  I find a spreadsheet a handy way to keep track of things, but I realise that an exercise book with one page per variety would be equally handy.

To find out what variety of corn was so successful last season and when I sowed it, I open the spreadsheet and look under corn. You just have to get into the habit of recording what you do, every time you do it.  You can also use the diary to record when you added manure or lime, when first and last frosts took place, and whatever else is worth recording for future reference.

Every time I 'sow' or 'plant' or 'pick for the first time' or 'remove' something, or when things go wrong ('nothing came up') I try to remember to add a line to my spreadsheet. I can sort the spreadsheet in order of Type or Date.

Now that I have recorded things for a few years it is becoming a really handy tool because it tells me what worked and did not work.  Yes, I still look at seed packets to see what they recommend, but the descriptions on them may have been written by someone in NSW, and not be correct for my local Tasmanian micro climate.

I now use my garden diary to tell me things like:

1. what did I do in the garden in April last year?
2. in previous years when did we have our first frost?
3. In the past how long did it take for the beans to come up?
4. what was that capsicum variety that worked so well?
5. what went wrong with my cucumbers last season and what did I do about it?

Of course I forget to enter info from time to time, but overall I find it very useful to have this record of past events, also because the micro climate in every garden is different.  Jo will have less wind than I have, and Russell will have more sun hours than Ilse and Tom, so everyone's results will be different.

You might prefer a pen and notebook instead of a spreadsheet.  Unless you have a fantastic memory and simply remember what worked and what did not, somehow documenting your garden events will improve your chances of success next time.

Happy diarising!