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Winter Activities:
"Record Time" With a Journal

Imagine beginning with a little black soil, working with it all year long, nurturing it, watching it grow, and finally, harvesting the food, and enjoying the fresh taste. When did you begin planting your seeds? What did you do to get your garden to grow? Why did you plant sunflowers where you did? What made you decide to grow potatoes instead of corn?

A gardening journal will help you remember important details from year to year. You can write down success stories as well as what did not work. You can write down good books or magazines that you read to find new information. You can write dream plans for the next year. You can map out your garden in your journal, record when you planted, watered, staked tomato plants, mulched, and weeded. You can write down how you got rid of a bug that was irritating plants in your garden, so when it happens again, you'll be able to solve your problem more rapidly.

To keep writing to a minimum, prepare symbols to show some of the routine activities of watering, weeding, planting, etc.
A garden journal can be a spiral notebook, a journal book purchased at a local store, or it can be homemade, with different illustrations on each page. Its cover can be made from recycled paper. It can be covered with dried and flattened flowers. Use your imagination, but try to record as much information as you can in your journal. Keeping a gardening journal will help you to improve your garden every year!

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Winter Activities: "Record Time" With a Journal

Winter Activities:
"Record Time" With a Journal