Do you plan your veggie garden?

It's a beautiful day, and looks like the night time temps will finally stay above 50. Time to plant. Wouldn't you know I was feeling ill today, so no planting today.  Since I can't plant maybe I can plan.  Being addicted to gardening I have a garden binder. In the veggies section is a map of all the garden beds, and also each bed has it's own page with the bed drawn and the size. This way I can get an overview and details.  Sometimes I use them, and sometimes I don't.  Mostly it depends on what's going on in my life. Ideally I would use them every year, but you know how it is.
It got me thinking what do you all do? Do you just scratch it out on a piece of paper? Write all the important info? Draw pictures? Or just plant it as you go with no documentation?

every time is different. i have a garden journal, but then it all goes to heck, i have to plant 7 waves of okra, the feral cats dig up the starts, etc. I would love to be more organized, but.... I have way too many responsibilities right now as it is. When I'm retired, I hope to be That Old Person with the Amazing Garden, for right now it has to wait.

Every year gets closer to a planned garden, but we are still far away at this time.

Prior to spring, I will sit down with my graph paper and scale out my existing raised beds. I'll even begin some indoor starts and meticulously record what is what and where it is. Great start! Super Organized! Very Efficient!

Then the next day begins. Papers get shuffled around, some get lost. My seedling identification skills are still developing and memories get hazy. Repotting and splitting occurs and suddenly the cells that I have started with very specific numbers of plants now either have significantly more plants started or not enough. Some plants make it, others don't. More counterspace is needed and things are moved into a rush. More chaos evolves.

Then comes the pre-ordered plants coming in the door. I got onion starts in, planned meticulously to go into ONE raised garden bed. Turns out I am not good at math and we have a bed and a quarter filled. We can't have that! Lets get at least another quarter ordered. OOPS! The company sent me some extra onions! First time onion grower decides that 300 onions is a great start for two people...

I just embrace the chaos at this point.

I will add: there is something lovely about garden planning in a place where you can "put the garden to bed" and yearn for spring as the snow falls.
I grow year round. I try to leave one bed fallow every year for soil development, but the rest of them are always occupied, and it's never "rip out everything and start again". You're always playing it by ear. Some plants stay forever, some stay til they get sick and get ripped out (looking at you, squash and mildew), some stay til the end of their seasons so they can self seed (basil, shiso), it's never one calendar, everyone's on their own time. i love watching gardeners like Charles Dowding, for example, who start with a blank slate and redo the whole bed like they're changing the sheets. I'd love to see what he would do with a year-round setup.

Before we moved to town I burned them!
All my fussy records and graphs!

Too much record keeping was weighing me down and taking away some of the serendipitous pleasure in growing things.

This was as I approached seventy years old though.
The records/plans did serve a purpose for decades.

For the last several years I've been planting more when the moment feels right and from memory of past experiences...might even be as reliable as record keeping for me?

No plans for me. I certainly have extra starts this year, but I always do. Normally I give extras away to try to get people to try growing. I may still give a few but I want to plant some out of the way and neglect them this year to see if anything survives. So I just randomly put where I think it will work.

I know what you mean Timothy. I was very careful to label everything, even when potting up. Well I thought I was being careful. I now have 5 tomatoes 2 peppers, and I think marjoram? That have no name.

Hi Jen,
I think I fall in with about everyone else replying. I do plan, but it doesn't always go according to the plan :)

I tend to use a spreadsheet that looks like graph paper, to plan it out. Then I print it out and bring it with me to the garden so I can plant things where I was planning. And then I get behind, and the paper gets wet, and I just need to get stuff in the ground... it's not complete chaos, but I don't think I have ever followed my plan 100%.

I plan out in my head mostly, and sketch out on graph paper once I actually put seeds in the ground. Putting it on paper wards against me forgetting that I already planted something there.

I do a lot of planning over the winter period. It's fun to plan out a new area, or new technique (playing fantasy gardens). I make lists of seeds and plants I want, then cross about 9 out of 10 back off again, otherwise I'd spend far too much! When it comes to actually doing though, I don't tend to refer back to the plan, I just wing it and stick seeds and plants where I fancy! I follow a 4 year rotation in my main annual growing area, but no more detail than that.

Back when I had a real garden instead of buckets on a deck, the only planning I did was in the 4 year rotation of family groups into the next bed.  I did use bio-dynamic sprays to help with disease control.  The crop rotation was a big factor in the prevention of disease.  I cannot say that these two things really stopped any problems in my gardens (I believe that to be true) but I had no disease problems and seldom did I have any pest problems to speak of.   Squash bugs mostly, controlled with two boards hinged together placed on the ground, they like to hide under the boards, in morning flip it over and slam the boards really hard, then check the underside of leaves for any eggs and wipe them off.

Peace

Deane Adams wrote:Squash bugs mostly, controlled with two boards hinged together placed on the ground, they like to hide under the boards, in morning flip it over and slam the boards really hard, then check the underside of leaves for any eggs and wipe them off.

Peace

!! OMG. Love this.
Now, give me an idea for the vine borers that sounds as much fun.

As for the question, I have at times made nice graph paper diagrams a few times. Not for 15 years though. A lot of my seeds are broadcast all mixed together, and a lot of other stuff is volunteer, or tucked in between rows of other things, so much planning doesn't make sense. Drives my methodical wife crazy. She calls it 'the jungle'.

I do enjoy spending the winter months planning as detailed as I can for different garden plots.  I use graph paper to get a pretty solid plan, but I've learned that it can be only a "Projected" plan at best. I say that because as I plan my garden, my first priority is to use old seeds first.  If I direct sow, some don't germinate, leaving "holes" in the rows or if an entire lot fails to germinate, I'm now delayed 2 weeks & need to replant with something else, weather permitting. Sometimes, I miss my earliest/best planting window & then get a month of rain, setting me back to less than ideal timelines.  

For the seeds I start indoors, I have to overplant some if using old or suspect seed. A lot has to go right to get quality transplants come planting time. That said, you can now see what seedlings are doing well, then figure out where you'll plant them, and determine if you have enough to give away to friends or relatives.

I plant whatever I end up with, right now for next year I have:  Cucumber seeds, lettuce seeds, spinich seeds, carrot seeds, calendula seeds.  Perenially I have a second year strawberry plant, they can make berries for a few years, blueberry, baby plum tree, plum experiment, and a couple of bulb flowers, ostromeria and liatris, and mint, and I'll likely get some potatoes because the grocery store, and I have some pumpkin seeds and a cantilope seed which I hope to obtain more of, and whatever else comes along by then, I tend to plant whatever I "run into", what lands in my lap for free or very cheap or by "happenstance".  And just see what happens.  Now that I'm on a balcony I don't really get volunteer "weeds" anymore, plusses and minusses for that.  Oh, and I want to try snap peas again this year, and I've got fava beans.  And I'm finally going to plant my wildflower seed mix in my new boxes that hang off the balcony rail!