Our brush with the somewhat over-hyped Hurricane Earl has turned my attention to the onset of a new set of garden chores to start scheduling.

Now is the time to take a critical look at your gardens and decide what worked and what didn't.

• Was your garden overcrowded, or were there were gaps in your display that needed to be filled?
• Did your plants perform as you expected, or is it time to switch up and try something new?

We refer back to receipts and notes to be sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Once the catalogues arrive, there are just too many choices  to rely on memory.

This reminds me of a somewhat amusing, or perhaps pathetic, story about plants.

I used to plant a really beautiful variety of lily.  The color was perfectly creamy, the shape a stately upright, the blossoms were large and uniform... and they were absolutely worthless as cut flowers because the petals were too fragile and they began to fall off as soon as you began to arrange them.

But the lily looked really good in the catalogue, and it sucked  me in three years in a row because I couldn't remember if it was that variety or another that was the problem.  At least I was consistent: consistently stupid.

Good records or a garden diary help eliminate this kind of issue, and it really isn't that hard to keep up.

Purchase an At-A-Glance monthly calendar and start wherever you are in the season; jot down impressions, planting dates, variety names, harvest dates, and any other event that stands out.

I keep mine right next to where I drink my morning beverage, and reach over to jot down what's happening at least every three to five days.

When I get into the season and discover that plant X is too big and plant Z is too late, I go back to the planting date and amend the description so next year I have what amounts to a blueprint that I continuously refine and adjust.

I've got a neat stack of 10 of these that I keep archived so if I can't find a reference in this year's book, I look for it in one of the others.

As the fall progresses we are going to go over some specific tasks that will make next year's spring and early summer much easier.

• For now, just keep deadheading flowers. 
• Cut dead or diseased branches, stems, fruits and veggies and remove them completely from your garden area.  This will keep disease spores from wintering over near your plants and also will remove the smell of ripe produce which might draw unwelcome pests to your garden.
• Make a map of your plantings to use when you are designing your garden next year so a proper rotation can be followed.
•  If the weather remains dry, continue to water at least once a week so perennials continue to store energy and annuals produce flowers and veggies.

There are still three more weeks of summer and six more weeks of guaranteed growing weather, so get back out there and keep on growing until the season is over.

Randy Brown, a.k.a. Uncle Buck, sells insurance by necessity and grows flowers by choice here in New Canaan. Look for his chronicles of life as a suburban farmer and tips for your gardening adventures in New Canaan Patch. Look for his flowers at Walter Stewart's and the New Canaan Farmers Market. Contact him at unclbk@aol.com.