WHERE DID I PLANT MY BAYAM CALALOO AND MY KIWANO?

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

Written by the poet Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Early 1900's. This sets the tone for a gardener's New Year

January. Bleak, frigid temps, barren.

This is how I usually see January. It's after the hustle and bustle of the holiday's. It's purty much a let down. It's hibernation time and one of the boringest (is there such a word?) times of the whole year!

I feel like I'm waitin' for somethin'.

Spring, but that's still a couple of month's away. Even if the Ground Hog doesn't see his shadow, it's still gonna be a little while. No, I definitely feel like there's somethin'......

And then it happens! I go out to the mail box and there it is!

My first GARDEN CATALOG! That's it. That's what I've been waitin' for.

No more drudgery. No more bein' bored. No more, 'woe is me'.

I can dream in color once more!

I can plan my garden for this year! Oh, happy me, happy me.

When I start receivin' my garden catalog's it fills me with hope and excitement for the growin' season ahead. I enjoy lookin' through my garden books, makin' my lists, checkin' 'em twice. I can start figurin' out my plantin' schedule and what I'm gonna grow this year.

There is somethin' I can recommend to you, if you don't already use one. A garden journal.

A garden journal is a great place for all of your gardenin' information and all your thoughts and ideas. You can list the seeds and plants you grow or purchase, when and where you have planted them and how they grew,

or didn't.

I use to put my plants in the ground and use the little markers the greenhouse put in the pot, to mark what kind of vegetable I was gonna get. Markin' my plants like this was such a joke. I have a cat that loves to chew on those little plastic tabs. I went out one day after plantin' my garden a couple of years ago and everyone of the little tabs I had so lovingly put in front of their little namesakes was either gone or layin' askew.

One of my sisters was always askin' me what kind of pepper or tomato she was eatin', 'cause she really liked it, and I'd always say, "you're eaten a green pepper" or "you're eaten a red tomato".

Now I draw my garden out in my journal and label everything there. I cut out pictures of new items I haven't tried before and paste the picture to a page and make notes about the plant.

You can write in a garden journal like a diary, keepin' track of dates and observations. You can note weather events that may affect your plants as well as record dates that you fertilized your plant's or applied pesticides and so on.

If you keep an up- to- date journal, you have an excellent record from year to year to help in diagnosing problems or successes.

Sometimes I cut out pictures of how I want my garden to look. I pretend that I will keep every weed pulled and every vine tucked, every row hoed.

Ha! I can dream, can't I?

Now, if you've never put in a vegetable garden, let me tell ya, it doesn't have to be big to put out a lot of food. Here's a couple pictures of my corn and green beans from last year.




These rows were about 24 feet long, three rows of corn and two rows of green beans. I put up 14 bags of corn and about 50 pints of green beans. Plus we had fresh beans and corn to eat during the growin' season.

CD and I don't put out very much of any one thing, just a good variety of several veggies.

So you can see that a garden journal is a good thing and it's not just for vegetable gardens. You can benefit from keepin' a journal for your flowers too. And it's great to keep track of an orchard.

So let's all have a happy growin' season this year with our diaries for our garden's.
R.