Gardening like Thomas Jefferson

This season I am committed to gardening like Thomas Jefferson. He detailed when things were blooming and what he planted. This is very useful when you are trying to determine what happened and when it will happen.I can generally remember what I planted in a general location and about what time something bloomed. I can not pinpoint it down to how much or what date. Those are two important things that can help you improve your gardening skills. A written journal will remind you how successful you did.

I once kept a journal on my fishing trips. I recorded information such as weather conditions, water temperatures, location, lures used, and what fish I caught. I know by journalling my fishing trips it helped me become a better fisherman. It is very interesting to look back on this information and see how the trip went.

By reviewing my journal I can see many of these trips in my mind and remember the joy that it brought me. I have no doubt that if I went back to some of these places I would have better success because I had historical data to back me up. That is the purpose of journalling the activity.The hope in gardening like Thomas Jefferson is to build a historical base on my efforts. I can track the success or failure of my gardening efforts to help me determine what seeds I should plant and what date they should go in the ground. This should help my gardening efforts in the future.

I also think gardening like Thomas Jefferson will help me this year. It would be embarrassing to reflect back on my garden journal and see missing dates. If I can commit to spending every day in the garden if for no other reason than to write in a journal it should improve. I am sure I will miss days just like Thomas Jefferson did.

Hopefully when I reflect back on this year I will not have a lot of missing days. I think that gardening like Thomas Jefferson will be a big step up for my garden efforts. If nothing else I will have a record of when I planted, what I planted, and what I harvested. I can not put a tangible result for previous gardens and that is something to change.

I am interested in hearing if any of you have a garden journal. If not are you planning on doing one this year? Do you think it would be beneficial? Please add a comment below and let the discussion begin!