Review Your Gardening and Plan for Next Season

While enjoying the fruits and veggies of your labors, take a few notes. There are plenty of great resources available to help you become a successful gardener. One of the best and most easily accessible is you! You can learn lots from cultivating good note-taking habits throughout the year.

Perhaps you drew a map of your garden beds or started a journal earlier this year. Now that the harvest is almost all in, take note of both the productivity and taste of your produce. Maybe you did not care for a particular tomato variety or found that the fruits were so tiny that they were not worth the effort. If you did not do it earlier, make sure to record where you planted everything so that you have a way to plan for the next rotation.

Note if a crop did not flower or it produced lots of flowers but they fell off before fruits formed. Do you have any other flowering plants nearby? It could be a pollination issue and now is a great time to add some new perennials to your garden. Keep track of planting dates, unusual weather patterns, fertilizers, soil amendments, pest, and disease issues. You can use all of this information in your assessment and decide if you want to change anything next year. You may also want to share your observations with others. There are a growing number of forums and blogs that may inspire you to keep up the good work both in the garden and on paper!