Knowing the variety of plant grown can be
valuable in case it does well, so you know to grow
it again, or if it does not, so you don’t. Having
a list of your preferred varieties is helpful when
selecting new things to try. For example, I like the
tomato varieties black krim and big rainbow, so
I may want to try similar tomato varieties such as
Cherokee purple and hillbilly.
Planting dates are also useful pieces of data to
collect. Most seeds will list days to maturity, and if
the planting date is known, the harvest date can be
estimated. This can become important when the
number of days until harvest is close to the length
of the growing season. Plants started too late in the
season to reach maturity before the winter chill can
be noted and started earlier the following year.
Planting dates are also important when calculating
garden performance. As long as the planting date is
known, it can be subtracted from the harvest date,
giving as a result the actual number of days the plant
required to reach harvest. The harvest weight in
ounces is divided by the number of days, which gives
the ounces per day rate. For example, if a plant takes
90 days to produce 20 oz. of harvested material, the
plant’s ounces per day rate is about 0.22. If the same
plant produced 10 oz. instead, the daily rate would
be about 0.11. One benefit to using this to calculate
performance is that growing seasons of different
lengths can be compared, which can be particularly
useful when dealing with indoor gardens.
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Dioecious plants have male (staminate) plants
and female (carpellate) plants. Male plants
supply the pollen, and female plants produce
seeds. If seeds are not desired, then staminate
plants can be removed when they declare
gender, and even if seeds are required, a single
(or few) male plants can pollinate several
female plants. In general, plants grown from
seedlings must be allowed to begin flowering
to determine gender, but cuttings taken from
a plant will all share the same sex with the
donating (mother) plant.
For the more detail oriented, other
factors can be recorded as well, including
environmental data such as humidity
and temperature, pH and amounts of
fertilizers added. Even material, electric
and nutrient costs can be calculated as a
daily expense rate and compared
to production.
Taking notes may not be the most
glamorous part of gardening, but
they can improve a garden by a
measurable amount—you’d have to
take notes to be able to tell exactly
by how much.
Grubbycup has been an avid indoor
gardener for more than 20 years. His
articles were first published in the
United Kingdom, and since then his
gardening advice has been published
in French, Spanish, Italian, Polish,
Czechoslovakian and German. He is
also considered one of the world’s leading
authorities on crochet hydroponics.
Maximum Yield USA | February 2014
109