By Sharon Parker
(This article first appeared in The Observer e-mail edition, February 25, 2002)
Garden planning goes well with a double latte, at a coffee shop, with notebooks and catalogs spread across the table, but I’ve also enjoyed it with a cup of tea in the kitchen. I could tell you that it’s most satisfying with a mug of herbal tea with herbs from my own garden, but how would I know?

I generally begin by tracing an outline of the established garden beds and then looking at plans and notes from previous years’ gardens. The outline is soon filled with penciled notes and erasures, and I label it with today’s date because it is usually the first of many plans--the number of times I change my plans is directly related to how long winter lasts, and how early I make that first drawing.

This year I made the mistake of beginning by paging through the Nichols seed catalog and making a list of seeds I wanted to order--only to gradually realize I was planning a five-acre garden.

So here I sit with my latte and my notebook, figuring out just how much I can really expect to plant. Looking at the previous years’ plans allows me to avoid planting the same plants in the same places year after year; it’s better to rotate crops, or plant them in different places each year, because the diseases and pests tend to be rather finicky, preferring a certain species, and it’s harder for them to locate a moving target.

The notes are also helpful, especially during the first several years in a new garden, because it reminds me of what perfomed well in what location. Like most city gardens, mine is sunlight-challenged, and so I have engaged in a fair amount of trial and error to locate the best garden sites. Notes from the first few summers remind me that the tomato harvest was sorry indeed in my chosen spot for the “kitchen garden,” and so have led me to try different locations around the yard.

I generally jot notes right on the plan, including whether I actually planted the thing I intended to in a given spot. I have attempted from time to time to keep more extensive observations in a garden journal, but it’s these pithy little notes jotted hastily after a planting, harvesting, or weeding session that are generally most useful, even if a bit hard to read for the dirt smudged on the page.

For example, I was remembering that we didn’t get any strawberries last summer, and was pondering whether I should dig them up and move them to a sunnier spot, when I came across this, jotted on last year’s plans: “5/19: strawberries have loads of blossoms and little berries are forming. 6/25--Most berries eaten! Some by Brigit [our dog]; others by birds?” Since then we have erected a fence to keep the dog out of the garden, now perhaps I should see what sort of bird netting these catalogs have to offer.