The Hivegarden QOTW was planning strategies for gardens. So here’s how an older gardener whose memory was decades ago eaten by Lyme disease gets through each year.
“In terms of your garden, are you a chaotic, disorganised gardener, or a neat and organised one?”
Because I have no memory to speak of, I rely on things being in order and in place. This means planning and mapping where everything is in the gardens. This helps me not pull up plants when weeding; helps me remember what each plant is; and in the veg gardens, makes sure I am growing enough for a year.
“If you plan, how do you go about it and what tools do you use?”
It all starts with planning the garden online using Garden Planner. This site carries forward where you planted a family of plants each year. It’s a huge help in rotational gardening. If you set the spacing you want for each type of plant, it automatically shows that spacing as you incorporate each variety.
Next I then draw in pencil the new plans on graph paper. These got to the gardens and get altered as needed. They have the spacing, length of row, name of variety, and number of plants on each row.
Once I know how much of each seed I need from the garden plan, the next step is to use self-made forms to do a seed inventory. The seeds are categorized by Vegetable, Herbs, and Flowers.
Within these categories they are divided up by seed starting date. I use self-made charts of all the seeds I’ve grown over the years and the best starting date for them for my area.
Once I know how much seed I still have, then I sit and got through the catalogs that have come in and select what I need or want. The orders are placed online these days. I use self-made forms to write out what the company is, what each seed is, how many seeds come in a packet to make sure I have enough, the quantity of packets and the cost. These are what I use to order from online.
“Do you record data for each year or just remember in your head? Do you use online tools to record or plan or a physical diary?”
Each year when I am out in the gardens, I make notes of what I have done. But I am always very tired and the notes are semi-legible and jumbled. So the first thing I do each winter is transcribe them neatly into the forms I have made for each garden or seed starting chart keeping track of the plant’s progress.
Next I got through the seed starting charts to make sure all the ones I need for the current year are there, and file the ones I won’t be using. Then I make sure all the pages have enough space for recording the data.
The last recording I do is an inventory of ALL my gardening equipment and amendments. This helps insure I have enough of everything I need for the year. This year I am adding 2 new windows for seed starting and I have already inventoried all the T5 bulbs for the fixtures and the fixtures themselves, so I will know what to order.
I keep a physical copy of everything as I do not trust computers. Plus I can bring them to the garden and I always write in pencil so changes and corrections can be made. (I don’t have a cell phone.)
As my 2 poor surviving brain cells are usually fully occupied out looking for each other (one’s usually headed to the Bermuda Triangle), not much get stored upstairs.
And that’s how I get through each season with as little duplication or not too many mistakes as I can.
