Garden Organization: Reflecting on last season

As a vegetable gardener, it is important to keep track of what you grow each year.  And, it is equally important to track whether or not you liked it!

With the weather cooling, and garden activities slowing down, it is the perfect time to sit down and reflect on last year's garden.  Here are some questions to consider asking yourself:

• What did you grow? 
• What variety did you grow? 
• Did you like the flavor?
• Was it productive?
• Would you grow that variety again?
• Anything you would change? - For example, did you plant too few or too much?

Hopefully, you already wrote down where you planted each vegetable and how many plants you had in spring.  But if not, now would be a good time to answer those questions too!

If you are like me, you won't remember the answers to these questions when spring rolls around, so I find it most helpful to write the answers down.  This would be a great time to invest in a notebook to be your garden journal or, if you are tech-savvy, create a garden folder on your computer.  I am a bit of a rebel, so I actually keep some information in a notebook, and some information on my computer.

Here is an example of a spread sheet I created to document my opinion of last year's garden:

Spreadsheet to track garden performance

I like having this information in an electronic spreadsheet because it is easy to sort the information by whether or not I want to grow it again, or alphabetically.

By having a written record of this information, I can more easily plan next year's garden. 

Did you have any varieties that you loved or hated this year?