When I set the goal to grow 1000 kgs of food this year, I realised I would need somewhere to record my harvest weights as I went along, and so I decided to use a garden diary. But I quickly realised that a garden diary is an essential tool that helps me in so many ways!

I started off with a very lovely, purchased 2013 Garden Diary from NZ Gardening Magazine. I love to look at it for ideas and all the lovely photos, but there was nowhere enough room for me to record everything I wanted to. After gluing and taping in extra photos and notes, I realised it would be simpler to just create my own. So I grabbed a spare ring-binder, sat down at the computer, and put together what works for me. What's in my garden diary? Join me for a wee look inside my 2013 Garden Diary....

Right in the front of my dairy is a Moon Calendar planting guide. This one is simple to use, and was printed free from NZ Gardener magazine's website. They have since changed their site, and it's no longer on there, so you can now download it HERE.

I use this guide to tell me when is the best time of the month to plant above-ground crops, root crops, or just concentrate on other garden chores.

I use tab dividers in my binder - each with a month of the year on it - to make flipping from month to month easy.

In the front of each month's section are photos and notes from the 1st of the month showing me what was happening in my garden then. I started doing this for myself, and later began putting photos on this blog each month, so now I just write the blog post, print a copy, and put it in my diary.

These photos and notes are very helpful - it is encouraging to look back and see how the garden has grown month by month, and it's also a useful memory jogger down the track - for example if I want to remember in which month certain plants were at their peak, or started to have problems. Or to track the growth of biennial or perennial plants.

Next in each section is a monthly planting guide, which I get emailed to me free from www.gardengrow.co.nz. These lists are a great starting point to guide one in what to sow or plant for your region. As my experience increases, I learn more about the best plants and timing for MY garden, but this guide has been invaluable this year.

I use a two page per month spread like this to track daily weather conditions, monthly rainfall, and anything else I care to note. The green lines show me at a glance the days of the month best for planting above-ground crops, and the orange lines highlight the root crop planting days. I print these pages free from the internet - there are several sites with variations available. I got mine HERE

I use these diary pages to make some notes each day on things I've done, anything of note, something I learned, or just about anything else! Again, free pages are available from the internet. I got mine HERE.

In some sections of my diary there are also pages of notes on particular crops or experiments in my garden, such as the Green Bean Experiment, or my Sweet Corn crop.

I created some pages on my computer. The first is one to record what I sow or plant during the month. I find I refer back to these pages often, especially any time I wonder just how long ago I planted a particular crop.

And pages to record my harvest weights...

A "To Remember Next...." page is handy to jot down info that is relevant to that particular month of the year, so that next year I will hopefully see timely pointers.

I have additional pages for tracking egg production from my chickens, and information relating to my sheep. The great thing about a garden diary is you can personalise it to anything YOU need to help you on your own homestead.

A Notes & Ideas page is handy to jot down those great tit-bits that I pick up here and there along the way.

I hope you have enjoyed this wee tour of my Garden Diary! I do find it a very handy tool to keep track of and plan my garden. I also tend to add in other notes and pages printed from the internet, but have to limit myself as my binder can only hold so much! I already had to change it up from a regular size binder to a larger one!

The local knowledge you start to acquire as you do things like track your weather is an enormous help in the garden. For example, I have noticed over the last few years (due to lambing in spring) that we always have storms and gales in September, which is the month of the Equinox. Knowing this, I can plan accordingly, ensuring things are anchored down well, plants that need it are well staked, animals have shelter etc. A local friend told me recently that strong winds are also normal for the end of November. I hadn't particularly noted that before, but she is right to point out that things like corn and broad beans, which are normally very tall by then, are likely to be blown over if not well anchored or staked. Forewarned is forearmed! Keeping track in a garden diary helps you become familiar with your own typical weather patterns, and reduces how often you're caught by surprise.

Personally, I wouldn't be without my garden diary!

Yesterday I sowed seeds of: hearting lettuce, gherkins, bee balm, borage, thyme, dill, chives, zinnia, cucumber, spinach, watermelon, zucchini, pumpkin and freckle lettuce in my greenhouse, and I have more seeds to sow, both undercover and directly into the garden.

So, how do you know what to sow, when and where? It is very helpful to have a local gardening guide, and here in New Zealand, www.gardengrow.co.nz is very, very useful. This website lets your choose your gardening region, then shows you what to plant this month and next, with details of how best to plant it, plus all plant names are linked to a page with more detailed growing and harvesting information. You can also subscribe to the email list, and get a weekly or monthly list of what to plant directly into your inbox. I find this an excellent tool.

On top of that, it pays to use local knowledge, as each area has it's own microclimate. So talk to your neighbours and those in your area who garden, and ask them when they plant specific things. In time, you will build up your own local seasonal knowledge. Keeping a gardening diary is an invaluable tool in achieving this - I'll post another article soon about my own gardening diary, what is in it, and why.

One more consideration - gardening by the moon calendars can be very useful too. Many people are certain the moon makes a big difference to plant growth, and my own experiments this year have shown that to be true. If nothing else, it is helpful to have a plan as to when in the month to concentrate on planting above-ground crops, when to plant root-crops, and when to concentrate on prepping, pruning and harvesting. All these things need timely attention, and something that helps you plan a monthly cycle can be a useful tool. I like NZ Gardener Magazine's downloadable moon-calendar. This is reusable one because each month you just turn the disc to line up with the new moon date for the month, and it tells you everything else. I keep a copy in the front of my gardening diary. You can find it here: http://nzgardener.co.nz/moon-calendar/ 

Spring has officially sprung, and all keen gardeners are chaffing at the bit to get growing! However, caution is needed at this time of year, as the danger of frosts is by no means over. Some plants can be sown straight into the garden now, but soil temperatures need to be high enough for them to germinate. Most crops will do better if sown in trays and kept under cover until the weather is warmer. This photo is of some of the seeds I will be sowing this month (except the corn, that pack shouldn't have been in the pile). I already have trays of broadbeans, celery, beetroot, celery, lettuce and onions germinating happily in the greenhouse. From September 7th - 17th is the optimal time for planting all but root veges, according to the moon calendar, so I plan to get busy. Larger seeds such as pumpkin and zucchini will be planted in individual pots or in toilet rolls and then potted up later, to keep them growing under cover until it's safe to plant them out. Most of the rest will go in seed trays in the greenhouse and be planted out in a few weeks. I also need to purchase a few more packets of seeds - especially silverbeet and sunflowers.

September is also a time when wild, windy weather can pretty much be guaranteed. As we approach the Spring Equinox on September 22nd, the weather is always very unsettled. Gales, thunderstorms and heavy rain are all par for the course. Right now, New Zealand is experiencing intense gales and thunderstorms around the country, and many towns are without power tonight. At my place, it's very, very windy, but our power is still on, and I don't think there has been any major damage done at this point. A couple of simple explanations you might find interesting:

The Equinox happens twice a year, and is the point at which day and night are of equal length.

The Spring Equinox brings the wildest weather - and this is because in spring, Antarctica is at it's coldest for the year, while the Equator is very warm - the biggest differential in temperatures occurs and causes strong winds. In Autumn, Antarctica is at it's warmest, and so the temperature difference between it and the Equator is much less, though we can still expect unsettled weather close to the Autumn Equinox.

Weather can be unpredictable, but when regular patterns occurs, it pays to be aware of and prepared for them. The high-winds of September are another reason to keep seedlings protected, and are why I haven't already got all my seeds planted. I'm hoping for a few calmer days soon. This is also why I prefer to have our sheep lamb in July - our lambs are a good size before September, and much more able to withstand cold, wet, windy, miserable weather.

In September 2012, our family attended the ACE Student Convention, the culmination of months of work and activity. It was a great experience, but I was looking forward to after it was over, as it would be spring, starting with two weeks of school holidays, during which time I full intended to get busy planting a vege garden.

However, it was not to be. A series of entirely unexpected but major events from September to mid December took over and the garden didn't even get started. Meanwhile, I was mulling ideas, and starting to think I needed to think much bigger than a few little garden beds.

In mid December, I stumbled across Mavis' blog - this gal has the same size section as us, and in 2012 had set a goal to grow one ton of produce in her back yard. She achieved it, and decided on double or nothing for 2013. I was inspired! Along with all I'd been reading and thinking about food over the last few years, I had come to realise we really needed to grow most of our own food. But could I do it? Mavis inspired me to stop overthinking it and just give it a go.

A few years ago, my husband had helped me by making 4 raised wooden garden beds, each 2m x 1m, out of untreated 6x1" timber. These had been planted last year in various things, inspired by the garden group I had joined. They were now fairly untidy, but there were a few things growing in them - some rosemary and silverbeet, parsley, raspberries and boysenberries etc.

Last summer, I had had the ingenious idea to have my husband make me some wooden frames for new garden beds, of the maximum size that I could reach across to the middle from both sides, and as long as the available space allowed for. Plus, a moveable chicken house and run that could sit on each bed and be moved from one to the other - a chook tractor. My lovely husband made them to my design - the bed frames are 1.25 x 3.25m, with a flat plank on the top edges so the chook run could sit on it. The chicken run is a masterpiece - but made out of wood it turned out to be far to heavy to move easy, even for two people. It's now sitting out in the back paddock. Only one of the frames got filled with dirt and planted last year, the rest remaining stacked ready for use.

So, shortly before Christmas, I started planting whatever I could. The existing raised beds got weeded. A friend generously gave me many seedlings, which I planted. I started digging up sections of the front lawn to plant in sweetcorn.

I determined that I would plant absolutely anything I was able to get free or very cheaply, and that I would keep a garden diary to record what I planted and where, and how it turned out. If anything didn't go well, I'd learn from it and move on. I accepted that I would probably not get everything right this first year, and that that was ok. I knew I was starting late in the season, so couldn't expect to get as much harvested this summer as would have been possible if I'd started planting in September. (Actually, I'd stopped beating myself up about that when a late very harsh frost on December 8th severely damaged many people's tomato and sweetcorn etc seedlings that they had all diligently planted earlier).

However, I decided to go ahead and set the goal of growing 1000 kgs (one ton) of  produce in my garden this year. I considered giving myself until the end of the 2013/14 summer, so I'd have one full summer season, and this is an option if it proves impossible to come close during the 2013 calendar year. Starting out, I had no idea whatsoever if I could actually reach what seemed to be a huge goal, but I've always found that setting a goal, then telling others about it, motivates me to keep on trying when I'd otherwise start with a bang then loose momentum.

In the last part of December, I did the following:
1) Cleared the weeds from a small patch were a few months earlier I had planted some blackcurrent cuttings given to me my a local gardener. 9 had struck and were sprouting some leaves.
2) Cleared out the weeds and the parsley and silverbeet that had gone to seed from 3 of my original raised beds. One I planted in two rows of beans as an experiment - more on this in another post. One I sowed with carrots and covered with some fake carpet to keep moist, and the third I planted with some kumera (sweet potato) shoots. (Picture above)
3) I took the bird netting off the top of our old chicken run and placed it over the bed of raspberry and boysenberry canes I had shifted there a year or so earlier.
4) I planted some pea and yellow bean seeds in the only larger wooden bedframe already filled with soil, along with some freckle lettuce seedlings a friend gave me.
5) I dug a small patch outside our bathroom in the full sun, and planted 3 yacon tubers a friend had also given me.
6) I nabbed some comphrey seedlings from Freecycle, and planted them under the apple tree.
7) Following an idea I'd seen on the internet, I planted a potato patch no-dig style by laying down newspapers on the ground, covering them with a little compost, then spreading them with old hay. I planted two bags of seed potatoes, and a whole bunch of sprouted potatoes from the kitchen.
8) I dug a 4m x 1.4m strip in the front lawn and planted it in corn. My husband dug two more strips the same size
for me to plant - the first time in 10 years he's dug a garden for me.
9) In a front garden bed along a fence, which had been waist high in weeds I couldn't conquer for 6 years until last winter when my daughter decided to do something about it, I planted two orangeberries and 8 zucchini seedlings.
10) I started a worm farm in a borrowed worm bin and I planted a cucumber and a passionfruit vine
11) On a spot where there used to be a greenhouse some years ago, I began another no-dig bed and planted it with 10 zucchini seedlings given to me by a friend.

More on each of these in other posts.