Thomas Jefferson was one of many prominent Americans who kept garden diaries. For some time I have been eager to urge my readers to "be like him." Unfortunately, I have not been able to get it together to start one myself. So it hardly seems fair to urge one on you.
I can, though, suggest something more modest. At the end of the season, when there is no more we can do outdoors, we should be able to find a day or even half a day during which we can review the previous year in the garden (before we forget it) and make some modest plans for the season ahead. We can put our notes in a notebook or type something on our computer, or simply throw our notes in a file folder. So long as we can can find them again in March.
At our house much of the planning centers on our 22' x 28' vegetable garden, but it could just as easily center on an annual flower garden. Annuals start from scratch each year. So, if you let them, they can make you re-think parts of your garden every spring. Do we really want impatiens again this year? Were they too much work, or did we wish we had more? Should we try a new spot?
Any spring planting requires making decisions. The absolute easiest decision is to do exactly what we did last year. Nothing wrong with that if it works. But we will have more fun if we escape the clutches of habit and consider alternatives. And once we actually try something new, we are engaged in an experiment and we will be tempted to take a note or two on the results so we can do better the next year. Voila! Jefferson would be proud.
Our next post will discuss the sometimes haphazard planning that went into our vegetable patch over several years. We might follow that up with an account of the evolution of our plans for perennials.
Now that we have finally broken 0 Degrees once more I can relish how many nasty bugs this freeze has killed off and look forward to implementing this year's plans.
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