This week’s column started out as an explanatory piece on the differences between warm season and cool season crops, geared specifically to novice vegetable gardeners.
While searching for some new and interesting information on tomatoes and zucchini and any information at all on Swiss chard, leeks, and salsify, I turned to the online edition of the “North Carolina Extension Gardener Handbook,” a colorful and well-written resource that is available for free online to everyone and in hardcover for a price.
I didn’t discover any fascinating facts on seasonal crops, but the title of Appendix A: “Journaling” caught my eye and took me back to Christmas of 1994 when I received a large, hardcover garden journal. Bound in dark green, the journal weighed at least four pounds. It wasn’t a pocket-sized, 100-page spiral notebook for jotting down daily observations. It was a 12-year journal that, when completed, would contain every jot of information concerning my beginning adventures in gardening: ...