DEAR DIARY By: Shirley Felder, Red Buff Garden Club, Cascade District Dear Diary, yes it’s me again. What’s that? You haven’t heard from me in a long time? I do not need any sarcastic remarks from you, Dear Diary. This year I have promised myself that I will faithfully keep a personal garden journal. If Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, writer of over 20,000 letters, could somehow find spare time to meticulously document growing over 300 varieties of more than 90 different plants over a span of more than 60 years, I am sure I can keep a garden journal this year. How hard can it be? This is what I will include. The exact seeds and plants that are sowed and planted and the time of year planted. Planting procedures and spacing of rows. The important milestones, such as when the first leaves and blossoms appear, to the day the veggies arrive at the table. The weather conditions. How much and how often the garden is watered. Any disease or pests and how they are controlled. I will document every success and failure. This is not everything I will include in my journal, it is just a short list. The important part is to get in the habit of detailing what goes on in the veggie garden so I can be more prepared for the next season. I will use a three-ring binder for my journal and include some graph paper to sketch garden spaces so I know where the crops need to be rotated in coming years. Jefferson was a big fan of crop rotation. He rotated his edibles so they weren’t in the same place more than once every three or four years. He also had over 5000 acres at Monticello, so he did have room to move things around. This doesn’t pertain to my planned garden journal, but I found it interesting. Jefferson included some recipes in his journal. The recipes were quite common for the day, which was to boil everything. The following is a recipe found in Thomas Jefferson’s own handwriting: “Cabbage Pudding: Shred ½ pound of lean beef and a pound of suet very fine, the yolks of 3 eggs, one spoonful grated bread, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt and onion. It will fill a cabbage which must be parboiled and opened at the top. Scoop it out till you think it will receive the meat. Fill it, close it up, tie it hard and close in a cloth. When it has boiled a little, tie it closer. It must boil 2-1/2 hours.” This may have been his favorite way to have cabbage cooked. Well, Dear Diary, this is my plan for a garden journal. I hope it is not too ambitious. I also hope this same time in 2016, I will be able to look back at the year 2015 secure in the knowledge that when it comes time to plant my next garden I will never wonder what happened and what to do because it will all be documented. “I know of no way of judging the future, but by the past,” Patrick Henry. Red Bluff Garden Club is a member of Cascade District, California Garden Clubs, Inc. and Pacific Region, National Garden Clubs, Inc.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 17:23:01 +0000