I always was the kind of teacher that would plan my lesson on the way to class, or have scraps of post it notes stuck on the journal I'd inevitably leave at home. I'm not a good planner on paper. Any garden notes I'd make would be in various notebooks I'd lose or would be repurposed for sketching house plans, writing shopping lists and so on.
This year, I was tempted by PIP Magazine's purpose made garden journal. It wasn't cheap, but somehow moving into a whole new area made me want to record things so I'd have a clearer idea next year. PIP is Australia's permaculture monthly, which I usually get out from the library.
It's quite cute, as far as planners go - with vegetables in the lining and wipable front cover. I tend to write in it when I come in from the garden rather than in the garden itself. Often, over lunch - in this case a garden picked salad and fried tofu. Yum. I did try not to get sauce on the pages.
Excuse the odd orientation of these photos - I'm writing this at work (emergency teaching is great for Hiving) as I'm having trouble with uploads here. I can pre load them on my phone but they didn't load the way I wanted them to. I'm sure you'll get the idea though.
Throughout the journal there are little quotes to inspire, or in this case, make me laugh - I'm definitely good natured until the bloody chooks escape and rip up my seedlings. Bastard feathered things. There's a preface for each season where you can make notes for what's ahead, although I find organising my garden via seasons tricky as they're a little blurry these days.
However for each month there's a space to plan what you'll hope to achieve, as well as a temperature and rainfall table to make notes. I keep forgetting to do this but I think it's a good thing to do to easily refer back to for next year. Dammit, I just realised that Hive should have a garden planner app. Why didn't I think of this before? Probably too late now, with the price the way it is.
There's also a chart for when to plant and sow, which is great. I was going to laminate one for the garden but now it's all in one neat book so I don't really have to.
Of course, it's also week to week, and there's also a few recipes and the moon phase noted. I can't say the recipes are particularly useful to me, but they might be to those who enjoy growing their own food. In some ways I'd like to create my own gardening journal on Canva for Amazon but it's probably a waste of my time as there's so much AI content it'd be hard to get noticed anyway. I can never be bothered with the marketing.
I have to say, I quite love my little book. I've only been using it since early January though so it remains to be seen whether I'll use it consistantly though. It is good to make little observations and notes, but I'm the kind of person who just holds all that in my head anyway with all the other things my overworked brain keeps and uses.
I do hope I remember not to plant so many beans next year though. Jamie just doesn't eat them.
A few notes from this year, if I only have the blockchain to refer to:
- create better shade for the northerly aspect as many things get crozzled in the heat.
- Planting tomatoes early was a good idea.
- self pollinating zucc was a pain. plant heaps of flowers for bees ready for next season.
- plant more chilli in more fertile soil.
Do you plan your garden in a formal way or hold it all
With Love,
 | Hi, my name is @riverflows and I help facilitate the Hive Gardeners group here on the Hive blockchain. You can find us here. I live in a warm temperate climate near the coast in Australia. I really love growing our own food and medicinal herbs, native plants, and creating good soil for resilient plants. |
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Wow, if you can store information in your head, it shows that your brain is still working well. Some people have that ability to remember things easily without writing them down. I am quite the opposite, I prefer to jot down almost everything I need to remember. When I do, it helps me to stay organised and not to forget important details.
Your vegetables are looking fresh and fine. You did well with your garden. I love beans anyways. Weldon
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I know right, my husband's the same. The only time he writes things down is when he is stressed and needs a list to help him calm down! And then I have to remind him. It's just the way our brains work - fast and hard. It's stressful though! I do know what you mean, when I was teaching full time I'd jot out the week in the planner to help me get an idea of what it looked like, but then I didn't need it after that. Wouldn't it be great to have a photographic memory you could switch on and off?
Im the same, this year I have been working on a project manager to keep track of things at work and personal life, notes its a big part of it but I think we someone is creative or easy distracted its not easy to keep track of things, writting still have that big impact in our brains to remember stuff aside from the satisfaction if you really like writing just as you and many other of us in HIVE, that diary looks well build even gave me an idea if to have something like this for HIVE, like a guide for new users but turn into an online diary to track growth, see distraction jejejeje going to make a note oout of this to review latter on 😅✌️
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I love that idea, that's pretty cool. You could probably whip it up on AI pretty fast!
I'm hoping to plant more beans this year, I love them frozen for winter eating.
What I have to plan these days only requires a regular calendar, but I used to plan for hours for every 42 minutes math class I had to teach, at least the first time around. I can't imagine walking into a class without knowing exactly what I was going to say and do with them. I would even have done the homework I assigned to them, to be sure I had taught them everything they would need to know in order to do it.
But is is a very good looking planner!
Don't worry, I did have that panic before I had taught that unit before. But when you are teaching the same thing all the time, I could just ad lib. That planning is a killer isn't it?
Horrible. Took so much time! But my students, unlike other math teacher's students, were able to do well on their exams without my having to curve the scores. The teachers who didn't prep, didn't make their exams carefully, would have entire classes not able to score above 40% on any exams. I am quite proud of how my students did, and it was because I worked so hard on crafting my classes, their homework, and their tests. As hard as they were, those were some of my good old days.
There's a reason to be proud! I loved teaching for those successes too. It was just far too much giving for me in the end, as you know. It just became not worth the huge, huge, huge effort you put in with no checks and balances for teacher's mental health. Don't even get me started.
That is a neat little journal. Sadly I just plan to wing it with my tomatoes. I'll try to remember what I did. But unlikely it will take and stay by next year.
As for the beans. I love beans. However, depending on the type of bean, my gut does not. Nor does the wife when they finish digesting :-)
Beans, beans,the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!
oh, and they do too.
I've seen various forms of garden journals, but they just can't hold ALL the stuff, as the head doesn't hold much. Some of them are mighty attractive but just too small. I liked the joke in yours!
To be fair I'll use it but I'll still store it in my brain! Grateful it still works okay. It's messy but hey it's still functional 😂
That's how my notebooks roll as well because that's life XD Though having said that I've only just started up another one this year and only because I was so enamoured of the cover of the notebook that I bought for coaching that I got the smaller version for my bag as I finally decided to go back to writing notes/todo lists etc rather than using my phone (for no other reason than I write and get out the book slightly quicker than I can type on the phone or unlock and pull up whatever app I was using, and also I don't have to keep unlocking the phone when I forget to keep it awake, and also very recently got reminded that I can also keep stuff in the notebook).
Why's that?
Same and then I kind of eventually accepted the fact I have indexing issues (I know it's in there somewhere but I can't always get it back out, however I was always extremely stubborn and kept trying and trying to operate just off my extremely glitchy brain because I really, really, really couldn't be bothered trying to remember to use any kind of planner and I kind of wish I'd just done it before as I would have gotten so much more done, and now I don't know if it's indexing issues or if I'm actually straight up just not remembering things).
Perhaps the cuteness of your book will help you keep using it for a little bit more? XD
The overall garden has a plan. Each area not so much XD
I really admire some of the gardeners here who are so organised and have everything down to the dot, and of course end up with some beautiful produce. I'm totally the opposite and wing through each season and hope for the best. Hopefully I'll be lucky this year
Ha yep I'm a winger more often than not - just the more the years go by, the more I think about planning, especially things like companion planting. Thing is though I'm still planning in my head mroe often than not. I can remember where the broccoli was three seasons ago for rotating beds and it's not like they go in bed order left to right every year haha! You are getting better at it though - I've seen it. Did you fix that retaining wall bed?
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