Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Tag: garden

  • My Garden System is Getting More Sophisticated (What’s Working)

    My Garden System is Getting More Sophisticated (What’s Working)

    in progress garden with no growth yet

    The garden overview photo was taken as I began this three-hour tour.

    On the left side is a cover crop of clover that I definitely did not plant. That is supposed to be a row of greens, but unfortunately nothing has grown enough for me to distinguish between actual food and the three-leaf version of a leprechaun’s dream.

    layout of garden with numbered beds and location of plants

    Why Everything Is Numbered

    I have a tendency not to plan things out, which becomes problematic when trying to grow food and medicinal herbs.

    So everything is divided into numbered beds. What you don’t see is why they were placed where they were.

    The bottom half is all herbs:

    • #1 loves water
    • #2 likes a moderate amount
    • #3 prefers it drier, grows taller, and would otherwise shade the others

    The rest is organized by nutrition, water needs, and companion planting.

    planting dates for 2026

    My Planting Spreadsheet

    This spreadsheet tracks:

    • frost dates
    • indoor starts
    • transfer dates
    • direct sow timing

    I had to start marking completed tasks with little stars because apparently I cannot be trusted to remember what I already did.

    Eventually I’ll rewrite it in fountain pen like the rest of the commonplace book, but growing actual food takes priority.

    journal with drawings of medicinal herbs and their uses

    The Commonplace Book

    This idea sprouted (yes, I did that intentionally) from a terrible mistake last year: I didn’t know what any of the herbs looked like beyond the seed packet photos.

    So I started drawing the herbs and writing what they’re useful for.

    I’m doing something similar with vegetables, but without pictures. If I can’t recognize a tomato by now, I clearly have other issues that need immediate attention.

    Also, I’m not sure why I decided to write my capital A’s like that. I appear to be passing notes in 7th grade English.

    3 types of tomato starts

    Starts Actually Worked This Year

    Last year my starts failed because I made too many mistakes to recover from and ended up buying starts.

    This year they germinated.

    I’d like that entered into the record.

    tomato cages repurposed for zucchini and cucumbers

    Improved Trellises

    I still haven’t built proper trellises because I refused to ruin my cozy “don’t leave the house” weekend by going to the home improvement store.

    Instead:

    • I flipped two tomato cages upside down and secured them to fence posts for cucumbers
    • I used another tomato cage for pole beans, buried to the first ring

    Elegant? No.

    Functional? We’ll find out.

    similar picture with the tomato cages but includes my cute dog

    Bonus Content

    This photo is similar to the previous one, but I believe everyone deserves to see my good boy.

  • Building a Commonplace Book

    Building a Commonplace Book

    I don’t have any pictures to share yet, but I have been building a commonplace book for this endeavor. I have sections for gardening, recipes, and crafts. I have a separate one for learning Gaelic, so that is not included here. So far, I have a monthly task list for my garden (which I included because those are the ingredients I’ll be using in many of my recipes) and a vegan bannock recipe. One of these days, I will post photos, but right now I am shy about how messy it is. Which shouldn’t be a barrier, but it can take me a while to feel comfortable with that.

    I was going to highlight the sides of the pages in the colors I chose for the sections, but I quickly realized that won’t work if I have, say, one page of garden plans and then one page of recipes, and so on. No one would be able to see the differentiation. I will likely try washi tape next, even though the thought of putting a strip of washi tape on every page sounds tedious. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

    I do struggle with boring pages…there are people out there who are amazing artists and I love that they share that with the rest of us. I do not expect my pages to look like that, but I grow tired of just writing linearly down the page. So with my monthly garden tasks, I at least color-coded the months to break up the monotony. I also drew a couple strands of wheat on the bannock page and included a quote regarding bannocks by Robert Burns. That’s about the best I can come up with right now, but I am happy the pages are more interesting now.

    I’m currently using an Amazon Basics grid notebook. I have TONS of notebooks and I have to use them before I can justify buying more. I find the grids difficult to use though, because they are visually loud, and the substance of my information can get lost. I have decided that the next time I need a notebook, I will buy A5 paper and print out dotted pages. After that, I will bind them. This need became apparent when I was looking for notebooks with more pages; I found many with 50-100 sheets, but I’m looking for 200+ sheets (not pages). I don’t want dozens of books hiding around the house. As it stands, I have a few old planners, an old commonplace book, two black paper journals that I found near impossible to use, several notebooks of certification studying, etc. I don’t mind having a separate notebook for something like a network security certification, but I don’t need four of them to talk about one thing.

    Ugh, I just remembered the 8 brand-new engineering pads I bought before I changed my major to computer science.

    stock photo of an open notebook on a desk with a pen on top
    Creative desk camera notebook by Markus Spiske is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0