The biggest difficulty I faced when I started the vegetable garden and, more generally, when I started to have to maintain my garden, was to manage the impressive amount of information that I suddenly had to master: remembering the names of trees and plants, their maintenance, their needs in water, light, type of soil... from sowing periods to the name and treatment of diseases that inevitably end by contaminating our garden.It was obvious from the start that to properly maintain my garden, and hope one day to be able to grow something in my vegetable patch, good organization, precise monitoring and well-filed notes would be necessary for me.Fortunately, my garden came into my life around the same time as Foglietto.The latter has proven to be particularly useful in the vegetable garden, where there is a need to plan but also to experiment and adjust continuously, and where several reading grids are often necessary to understand and therefore act in a reasoned way.Today, I'm sharing my way of doing it with you, but here too: it's up to you to make the most of the unlimited flexibility of Foglietto to adapt this example to your own needs and desires! Organizing your vegetable garden is essential, but it doesn't have to be complicated...

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The tool kit for gardeners who don't want to get bored:

• From Foglietto cards, Quadrato and To-do patterns may be best suited here,
• Some interleaving sheets,
• One or more Archivio or Tesoro boxes.

Organizing your vegetable garden: what information do you need to record?

Let's start by putting some order in all this! There are basically three types of information you will need to record, regarding your garden and your vegetable patch.For this, you will therefore create three types of sheets: resource sheets, plot sheets and monitoring sheets.

Resource sheets contain all the "practical" information about the trees, plants, flowers, vegetables and other plants that you will plant in your garden.You will dedicate a sheet to each variety, for example a sheet for Oslo Blue tomatoes and another sheet for Coeur de Boeuf tomatoes.On each of them, you will note the exact name of the plant, its variety, the dates of purchase, sowing and planting of the seeds or the plant, and any other information that you deem useful, in particular concerning its maintenance.You can choose one plug color for trees, another color for vegetables, another for perennials and annuals, etc.Over time, you can add other information, such as annual harvests, which will allow you to compare the yield of each variety.

The plot sheets will initially include less information, but will be enriched over the year.You will dedicate one sheet per year to each area or cultivated area of ​​your garden.You will note the dimensions of this area, the care you give it (for example if you amend the soil or not), as well as your planting plans for the coming year.These sheets will be particularly useful to you in the medium and long term to see the evolution of your practices and your garden.

Finally, the monitoring sheets include the harvest sheets and the maintenance sheets.Depending on whether you are more interested in the yield of each plot or each variety of vegetable, you can create a harvest sheet per plot and per year or per vegetable and per year.I personally opted for this second option, in order to more easily see which crops are the most productive.In the same way, the maintenance sheets can be produced by garden area or by plant species.They will include all the indications concerning the pruning and the preventive or curative care given to each plant, excluding vegetable garden plants.You can also make weather monitoring sheets, and many others according to your gardening practices.e

With Foglietto as in the vegetable garden, you will probably need to experiment with different ways of doing things before finding the one that suits you best and seems the most intuitive.

Sowing, planting, plots, maintenance, harvesting... How to classify all the information from the vegetable garden?

This classification step is far from being secondary: it is essential.It is she who will then allow you to easily cross the reading grids and to understand, at a glance, what are the tasks to be carried out today in the vegetable garden, or why such and such a crop has not did not go as you expected.There are also several options available to you here.

We have chosen here a classification by type of activity, because it will help us next for point n°3, planning and organizing your vegetable garden.The idea here is to have three main categories of cards (signified by a tabbed card on the left):

1. Resource sheets: plant sheets, technical sheets, recipe sheets (different manure, natural treatments against pests, etc.)...
2. The plot and area sheets of your garden,
3. Planning sheets, month by month or week by week.

You can add, if you wish, secondary categories under these main tabs: for example a tab for each month of the year under the "planning" cards.

Your files will move from one category to another according to your needs.Let's take an example: you plan to plant, in May, on your plot n°3, 5 feet of Oslo Blue tomatoes and 2 feet of White courgettes from Trieste and to water them, at planting, with nettle manure which will boost their growth.You will therefore slide, under your "Planning" tab of "May", the plant sheets of the tomato and zucchini varieties concerned, as well as your plot sheet and, why not, your recipe sheet for nettle manure.When the time comes, you'll have everything to hand!

On the material side, you can opt for a wooden box, Tesoro or Scatola, or an Archivio archival box.Each has its advantages for this type of activity: the wooden box will not be afraid to accompany you in the garden, while the Archivio box, made of cardboard, will also accommodate most standard size seed packets.

How to plan your cultivation and work in the garden based on all this?

That's all well and good, but now, how do we use all this information carefully compiled and classified on our files to organize our vegetable garden and monitor our crops on a daily basis? We will proceed in three steps, a bit like a brainstorming.

First step: you are going to distribute your vegetable sheets on your plot sheets.You have normally noted on each vegetable sheet the type of soil and exposure that each plant needs, and vice versa, you have noted on each plot sheet the type of soil and sunshine it receives.All you have to do is mix and match the plant sheets with the most compatible plot sheets, while paying attention to the favorable or unfavorable associations between vegetables, which you will have noted on each vegetable sheet, and to the available space/desired yield ratio.

Second step: adjust all this by now establishing your crop rotation plan, in order to have the different crops follow one another on the same plot.You will probably need to make some changes during your planning, so that you can associate a plot with all your crops.Note as you go along on each plot sheet, in pencil, the crops that are planned there according to the periods.Conversely, you can also enter the plot number and the growing period on the sheet for each vegetable.Crossing information is essential in gardening!

Finally, the third step: from this plan and your vegetable and maintenance sheets, you will be able to establish your sowing, planting and maintenance schedule for the coming year.You can do this by using "To-do" sheets on a monthly basis, for example by setting up a color code.You will thus be able to have 4 "To-do" sheets in May: a pink for sowing, a blue for transplanting/planting, a yellow for maintenance (preparation of plots, size of trees, preventive care, etc.) and others according to your needs.

Once this is finished, your schedule for the year will be ready! You can display your monthly lists in a prominent place, for example in your kitchen, or store them in your vegetable garden tracking box, ready to be taken out as soon as a ray of sunshine allows you to go for a walk in the vegetable garden.

In short, to organize your vegetable garden.

In summary, the vegetable garden is a skilful balance between reflection and action, between theoretical learning and practical experimentation… Everything that Foglietto loves! Our little cards will be a perfect support for recording your inspirations, your reading notes and your field notes, which will in turn feed your thinking and the creation of your vegetable garden plan and, finally, your planning. monthly activities! You will no longer forget the sowing periods of such a vegetable, nor the way in which such a tree must be pruned.And the top of the top? You will be able to keep track of all this from year to year, in order to see your evolution and that of your vegetable garden.