I LOVE organization. In my "past life" as a worker on a diversified organic farm part of my job was to help create and keep the production records. As a result, I tend to run our little backyard/front yard farm with the same type of records. I make maps that are to scale of my growing areas. I use engineering graph paper as it has smaller grids than typical graph paper, but use whatever type of paper makes your brain happy!
Maps let you see your garden space and give you an idea of areas that are not being utilized.
When I first started mapping my garden, I used a color-code system. I followed the crop rotation system of leaves-roots-flowers-fruit and assigned a color to each of those categories. Do whatever is helpful for you! Take time to make maps of where you planted your veggies, flowers, etc., this year (if you haven't already).
These are the maps I've made of my back garden and raised beds. They certainly are not fancy! I keep a clean/blank scanned copy saved on my computer so I can print one for each month of the growing season. Then as I plan out my crops I color/block the space they take up and also enter the date they were planted and the expected harvest date. In past seasons I've had one map that I used all year. In 2020 I wanted to push the limits on what we could grow in our little space, so I double or triple planted each "block" throughout the season - requiring many more maps!
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