Log your harvest instead of guessing it
August is when the harvest really rolls in — and with it the most useful data of your gardening year. Write it down now, and next spring you'll plan from facts instead of a hunch.
Two kilos of courgettes a week sounds like plenty. But was it more or less than last year? And did those three rows of bush beans actually last, or were they finished by the end of July? August is the month your garden hands you the most answers — as long as you write them down.
August is the most honest month
In spring we plan with hope; in August we plan with evidence. Right now you can see which row was too short, which variety disappointed, and which bed quietly outperformed everything else.
The catch: two weeks later you remember a feeling, not a number. And feelings make poor planning material — especially when six months sit between this harvest and next year’s sowing.
Partial picks or one big harvest
Most crops don’t finish in a single day. Courgettes, bush beans, tomatoes, chard — there’s something new every week. Log each individual pick; the amounts simply add up over time.
Only when a plant is genuinely done do you mark it as fully harvested. That way you end up with a real total in kilograms, not just whatever you grabbed last.
What a single number tells you
One total per plant answers three questions at once: was the space worth it? Was the yield too little, about right, or far too much for your household? And how long did the harvest window actually last?
Here’s a concrete case: if three courgette plants keep half the neighbourhood supplied through August, next year two might be plenty — freeing up half a square metre for something you genuinely missed. Decisions like that are easier with a number behind them than with a vague memory.
Empty space is a decision, not a gap
The moment a crop is finished, the space opens up — and by late August that’s often half the garden. This is exactly where crop rotation earns its keep: whatever goes in next shouldn’t belong to the same plant family as what just came out.
So no more cucurbits after courgettes and cucumbers, and no peppers or potatoes after tomatoes. Lamb’s lettuce, spinach or rocket all fit nicely right now — or a green manure, if the bed is allowed to rest until spring anyway. It’s worth checking the family on the successor side too: spinach and chard both belong to the amaranth family, so they shouldn’t follow straight on from one another.
How to start today
You don’t need to reconstruct everything since June. Just start with your next harvest — from there the record builds itself.
Three habits are enough: weigh each pick rather than guessing later, log it right after picking, and mark plants as harvested once they’re truly finished. Twenty seconds per trip to the bed — and come February you’ll be sitting down with real numbers instead of guesswork.
In Rootivo you record straight away whether a pick was partial or the plant is done. For finished plants the app then suggests suitable successors on its own, with crop rotation and neighbouring plants already taken into account.