#6 Journaling

If you are a gardener, one of your New Year’s Resolutions should have been to keep a gardening Journal. Or, if you are like the madman, to keep a BETTER journal. Why? Because as the madman says, “your memory is never as good as you think it is – in fact, it’s not even close.”

Journaling is a Memory Aid

You may think you will remember to start those Trinidad scorpion pepper seeds on February 20, but you’ll end up like the madman saying “When did I plant my scorpion seeds last year?” Luckily he learns from his mistakes, so we began a garden journal years ago. Sometimes we are better with it than other times.

Just note that if you garden you should also journal. You can get as fancy as you want – they sell impressive journaling notebooks with fancy pictures for $20-40 – if that strikes your fancy, go for it. Or, just pick up a notebook – three-ring binder type or spiral – it’s your choice. We started our first one at the end of a gently used Biology notebook from the madman’s freshman year.

Documenting Successes and Failures

As you go forward on your gardening journey you will thank us for this suggestion. Some of your ideas will work, some will not. Our journal basically keeps track of our successes and failures. At the very least, your journal should include: your garden ideas, seeds ordered and planted, plants purchased,  diseases or pests that plagued your beds, harvest times and quantities, general comments that will help you plan and plant in future years..

When the madman is rushing to move plants outside, I can show him the entry from April 9, 1979 “Snow on ground! About 1” fell overnight. Tomato plants put out under cold frame died. Must have been too cold.” Enough said.

Journaling is Personal

Journaling, like gardening is extremely personal. Those of you into scrapbooking may want a very fancy presentation with pictures, seed packets, pressed flowers, stickers, etc. Those of you into bookkeeping may want to keep an extremely detailed journal that might include quantities and prices paid for plants and/or seeds. The sky is the limit – literally. Our journaling is extremely simple.

Keep it Simple

It is interesting to note that at the very beginning, we had grandiose plans of detailing all the plants (native and introduced) in the yard and all the gardens. We dreamed of having volumes of pressed flowers, sketches of trees, plans of the gardens – you get the picture. Somehow, life (and kids) got in the way and we journaled what we needed to journal from year to year.

We have a variety of journals. Some things we simply note on a wall calendar (we have calendars located in the kitchen, the madman’s potting area and the living room). Some things are noted on scraps of paper attached to various calendars. Some notes are in a spiral binder – in reality we probably have three or four of these in various locations. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we often do our daily inspection tours with cell phone cameras to help us remember what’s going on. As dis-jointed as this approach seems, it works for the madman. As we said, journaling is very personal. Do what will work for you.

One of the things the madman notes on the kitchen calendar is the temperature. Not the daily temperature, extreme temperatures – if the temperature falls below 10˚ or rises above 90˚ the figure goes on the calendar. So what’s the big deal with the temperature?

Garden Life Depends upon Temperature

Plants, insects and diseases are temperature dependent-the more heat they absorb, the faster they mature. Believe it or not agricultural science has developed a way to calculate this by using growing degree days. Growing degree days (GDD) are calculated daily by subtracting a base temperature from the mean daily temperature (high + low/2). The base temperature in Connecticut is 50˚ because in our state very little growth occurs below this temperature. You keep a daily running total of growing degree days. Then what?

The Value of Knowing GDD

Since most of us are guilty of growing a tomato or two, it’s interesting that a tomato plant gives mature produce at around 1377 GDD. Wow! That sounds like a lot, but around here, we hit that number somewhere around late July or early August. Other fruits and vegetables hit their magic numbers throughout the summer; some earlier, some later. The madman’s prize Carolina Reaper Peppers need at least 1770 GDD to produce killer fruits!

But predicting when you pick your first tomato is only the tip of the iceberg. The madman has been fighting a running battle with the Colorado potato beetle for many years. As it turns out the little monsters are hatching around 120 GDD and by 400 GDD they are busy doing their greatest damage. This information is extremely valuable to the potato farmers down the street as well as the madman.

He doesn’t bother calculating the growing degree days or noting them in our journal. The scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) do this for him (and everyone else, too). Check out their website at https://www.ct.gov/caes.  Find the GDDs under Weather. The madman just likes to know hot or how cold it got during the year.

He also notes how much snow has fallen on a given day – remember, we told you journaling is a personal thing and should include what you want it to.  The madman has a very personal reason for adding this figure to our gardening notations, “because I want to.” Not the most scientific of reasons, but he is a madman.

We garden for ourselves and for the wildlife around our home. At first we thought our gardens were just for us, but through the Master Gardener Program we learned that we are in a partnership with the native wildlife. That opened up a new area of notation in our journals.

The Madman and Wildlife

The madman records all the migratory bird “firsts”. Here are a few sightings from last year. We saw the first Red Wing Blackbird on March 20 (interesting, this was the vernal equinox). The cow birds showed up at the birdfeeder on March 29. On April 15, Orioles came back. On April 19, we saw Grosbeaks. Our best friends the hummingbirds appeared around the feeders on April 29. 

We have a special affection for the hummingbirds. We know they are seen in Connecticut as early as April 1, but our past journals tell us that they show up in our garden around the last week of the month. Because the madman wants to make sure that any early arrivers find a reason to stay, he makes sure our feeders are hung long before they arrive. We have columbines, azalea, crabapple for nectar, and hemlocks for nesting and cover so we hope they will stay.

A Roadmap for Gardening

Our journals not only suggest when to put out our feeders, they tell us when to begin serious work in the garden. We prune our raspberries and any trees in February. We plant our seeds indoors in February and March. We move seedlings to the greenhouse in April. We know that onions and potatoes will be shipped to us in mid-April, so the garden has to be ready for them. We put the suicide tomatoes (a phrase borrowed from fellow Master Gardener John Carlson) outside early May. We will talk more about these in the future, but you get the picture. Everything we do in the garden is based on notes we made in previous years.

The latest thing we have begun noting is bear sightings. When we see them we know it is time to take down the suet feeders. And, we know that when we are working in the garden we need to carry a whistle or an air horn. The madman almost came to harm when three bear cubs thought he would be a good playmate as he weeded a potato bed on his hands and knees. He was able to back away about the time mama bear spotted him.

R E A D

The last key thing about journaling is to READ what you have written. Before you order your seeds or plan your garden layout, read your previous year’s journal. It should tell you what to do when, but more importantly it should tell you what not to do.

Listening to some of the madman’s thoughts over the past week, I think he needs to review his notes from last year. Sounds like it is cocoa time.

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