This winter, "picture" next year's garden!



Seed album with sticky notes

 The fact that I'm writing a garden blog is perhaps the most ironic thing in the world.  My ancestry would indicate that I'd be good at it:  my grandfather was a farmer, then a gardener; my mother could grow the most beautiful roses; my mother's mother's yard was a showcase; and my father's mother grew the loveliest orchids.  But, Gregor Mendel was right; the odds in genetic roulette eventually catch up with you, and they did with me.  I have a black thumb.  There.  I've said it, and I feel much better.

Perhaps it's more precise to say I had a black thumb.  It's getting greener by the year, albeit at a glacial pace.  Despite what anyone may tell you, gardening is hard work.  You're constantly battling to keep Mother Nature's minions--diseases, pests, and weather--at bay, all the while knowing they have the upper hand and will, absent your constant attention, take back the land you've worked so hard to prepare for plants that probably were not meant to grow there.  So, after years of tiny tomatoes, squash bug invasions, and drought, I'm surrendering, after a fashion.

Maybe, instead of surrendering, I'm taking a new tack.  First, a bit about my land.  It's buckshot.  During the dry summer, it becomes so hard I cannot put a shovel into it.  When the arid hot wind kicks up, dust devils swirl over cultivated land.  The sun is scalding hot within ten minutes after it rises over the trees.  It's desert-like in summer.  Winter is a different story.  Buckshot, when sodden, becomes so sticky and mucky that it sucks your Wellies off your feet.  It takes forever to dry out, so spring plantings are problematic.  So, I have a short, hot season which lasts from mid-May until November. 

Amending the soil with leaf matter
(picture taken before I fell off the trailier into the leaf pile).

Yes, I am amending the soil (I saw you raising your hand in the back of the room!)  Every year, I add more organic material--mostly leaves from my in-laws' trees.  The soil is improving, but, until it's the lovely humus we all covet, I've decided to be more selective in the varieties I plant.  But how would I know what worked and what did not?

The first few years I gardened, I kept my seeds in a lovely flowered box, rubber-banded into categories.  But that really did not help me keep track of what was working and what wasn't.  On a trip to my local Dollar General, I spotted an inexpensive photograph album and an idea sprouted:  why not a SEED album?

My seed album with journal below

So I slid those little packets into the photo sleeves, separated into kinds of vegetables and used sticky notes for comments about planting and progress.  And, yippity-skippity, it worked!  It keeps my seed packets neat and orderly and gives me a place to connect the comments with the pictures on the packets.  Using sticky notes will allow me to reuse the album another season.  I'm actually considering purchasing another album for the "don't even consider planting these again" varieties.

I also began a gardening journal (see the picture at right) for general impressions, rants, tantrums, and long-term planning; that's a topic for another day.

So, seed catalogs at one hand and seed album at the other, I'm planning for another year in the garden.  Stop back by to see how it turns out!