Planning

Good planning=good gardening

Good fences=Good neighbors

Practice=way to Carnegie hall

I’ve been lax on planning. I’d much rather be standing in the garden than drawing a picture of it. For me this is even true when the garden is under three feet of snow or frozen solid. But this habit is bad, bad, bad and I should be shunned from good gardening society. Every book and blog warns you that you will have a much easier time if you plan.

In the olden days, that is B.C. (before children), I kept a lovely little garden journal. I marked the high and low temperature for each day as well as the weather. I also recorded what I did in the garden that day and any notes on problems. Before the season started I drew up a little plan. It probably took ten minutes.

The onset of hurricane Isaac, which has yet to recede, led me to set aside my notebook, along with my alleged sanity . Since then I’ve just flown by the seat of my pants. A terrible image no doubt.

But today I turn over a new leaf. I’m going to pretend to make a plan.

In order to put this off as long as possible I did some hunting online for garden planning software. Everything I found wanted to charge me something. They’d give me a free month, but then it was going to cost 30$ a year. Better homes and gardens had free planning software, but no vegetables were included in the list of plants. Gardeners.com offered vegetables, but I only had the choice of a rectangular bed with pretty cumbersome restrictions. This won’t do.

So I enslaved myself to the man by drawing pictures on clouds. Or maybe it’s “the cloud.” An ominous image at best. My data is in the cloud. Yeah, sure, and the dog peed on my homework.

I used google docs drawing program. I am the man’s bitch.

This is what my garden looked like in 2009. Pardon the lacunae. A dog peed on my computer.

2009

As I’ve mentioned before I need to dig a bed every year, and so in 2010 I did just that

2010

Now I’ve dug another bed.

2011

The dashed line is the fence. Nothing is to scale.

These drawings do highlight my rudimentary garden rotation: nightshades stay out of the same spot for three years (peppers, eggplants, potatoes, tomatoes). Aliums also avoid the same spot for three years (onions, garlic, leeks). I try with brassicas and squash but don’t do as good a job.

For me tomatoes are what makes a garden. I love tomatoes. 2009’s blight was very hard on my emotions. I doubled down on my dose of SSRI’s and added a couple of valiums a day and made it, but it was tough.

So I’m going to try and start with this plan this year. Perhaps I’ll update it as I go along and you can grade me. On second thought, I’ll grade myself. It’ll be like Montessori for gardening. I think I deserve a C.

More later,

Keep digging.