Observe, an important garden skill

 According to Oxford dictionary, observing means to notice or perceive something and register it as being significant. One of the greatest skills a successful gardener has is observing his/her garden and taking note of little and significant changes.

In a garden, there are tons of things to observe. 

What do you need to observe in the garden? Everything! For some helpful pointers, you want to focus on the soil and plant parts like leaves, stems, fruits, etc. As you observe them, you want to take note of their color, size, presence of damage, intrusions, wanted visitors, and presence of moisture. As a side note, for any parents out there, while working with kids, I have seen that this is a fun way of getting them involved in the garden. 

With time, you will not need to go through this list to remember these things; they will become instinctive. Once you notice these things, you can make an informed decision of what to do next. If you see something that you do not recognize, there is a valuable feature Google has. You can use it to search. It is a search with a camera feature. You can take a picture through the camera feature in Google and search for the image. It will immediately give you helpful options for what you observe and what you need to know about it.

Here are some simple questions to break down and summarize what you need to observe in the garden?

- How does my soil feel? Do I need to water some more?

- Have my seeds started germinating?

- Do I see any pest damage in any plant parts? What do I do about it

- Do I see helpful insects like butterflies?

- Do my plants need some thinning or pruning?

I hope you find these helpful. I am looking forward to reading about your garden journeys. 

Thank you for reading.

Happy Gardening!