Every year it is the same. By October, we are tired of the abundance of squash and canning pickles, but by the first snowfall in December, we start to break out the seed catalogues and plan for the next season.
Maggie and I approach gardening a little differently. I tend to be more methodical, while she tends to plant based on the seeds she happens across at the store. Regardless of method, by the middle of summer the garden is overgrown and we are scrambling to harvest. One thing we have both learned is that it does pay, in general, to limit the varieties we plant. One type of cauliflower or tomatillo is just fine. Shortly after we finished putting the garden to bed, we pulled out the garden journal and spent an hour talking about what we had planted, what grew well, what did not, and what we wanted to do next year. This will, we hope, serve as the basis for the 2023 garden.
We have also, after 3 years, reached the point where the garden has attained its final size, giving us a fixed canvas on which to work. With all of the garden beds in place, I spent an autumn afternoon taking measurements and creating a sketch of the garden. Recently, I dug up that sketch and transferred measurements to a piece of poster board from the dollar store. I found a packet of colored post-in notes in the desk drawer, which we labeled with different types of plants. We then spent a pleasant afternoon moving plants around in the paper garden. Like moving furniture, it is easier to move a note that says 'couch' or 'corn' then to move the actual item. Like a pair of chess players, we moved our paper pieces around the board, making more notes as needed ('kale', anyone?), trying to factor in things like the number of plants, crop rotation, and plant succession options.
Younger and more tech-savvy folks would probably do this on a computer using a CADD program or other software tool. My father started out his career as a draftsman with pencil and vellum. He did side work, and I remember him working at a drafting board in the basement well into my college years. I took drafting classes in high school, and was probably among the last generation to do so. I often joke that I could have taken typing instead, but felt I would never use that skill as I was not going to be a secretary. As I type this with four fingers, maybe that was a poor choice. But, I have many of my dad's drafting tools and have used them for many projects: a bookcase design for my son's bedroom, laying out tile, designing the door for the chicken coop, and now the garden. I like the feel of using physical objects rather than a mouse, and producing something tactile. It is certainly more fun to look at a poster board garden on a sunny dining room table than to stare at a screen.
We ended up in general agreement on a plan, that we can then use to order seeds from, start seeds for, or dig through our seed file for. Once we truly feel the final beds are in place, I plan to create a more permanent template on wood that we can use each year. We may, and certainly will, deviate from the plan. But it is a start and something we can work from throughout the winter.
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