2010 Garden Journal
We moved into our new home in 2004 and the only gardening experience I had was experimenting with a few perennials and shrubs in our small city lot for about 3 years. I really knew very little about gardening, about landscaping, about choosing the right plants or about what worked well in the country versus in town.
My garden has grown, as has my experience, largely through trial and error. I have never hesitated to try something, nor have I been disappointed to have to start over again because it didn't work out as I envisioned.
My only real problem has been with accurately keeping track of what I have done from year to year. While this website serves as a repository of my ideas and successes, I have not always been good about recording what worked and what did not.
So this year, I decided to add a detailed garden journal to my website. My 2010 promise is to faithfully keep track of changes I make, garden experiments and our results.
March 2010 - It's all about planning.
April 2010 - A really early start to the vegetable garden. We had plenty of sunny days with above normal temperatures. The lack of frost days allowed for a great start to the vegetable garden and spring garden chores.
May 2010 - A warm wet start followed by freezing temperatures resulted in freeze damage to new growth and young leaves on many trees and shrubs. The last half of the month was unusually warm and dry. We had to water the vegetable garden every day and this is the first time I remember grass turning dormant by the end of May.
June 2010 - Plenty of rain in June once again produced some terrific blooms in the garden as well as kept the cooler season lettuce and spinach producing for an extended period. The extra moisture has certainly cause the potatoes to sprout and we had to mound them several times during June.
July 2010 - Warm weather combined with plenty of rain has meant green lawns, lots of garden produce and fantastic blooms. Amazingly, other than the dreaded Japanese Beetle and some Fall Webworms we have not seen a lot of summer insect damage.