Many people are getting their seed catalogs out and pouring through them this time of year.  It’s good to do a little planning and have your seeds ready to go whether you need to start your tomatoes in the house, are sowing some seed in your hot or cold frame or are just thinking about what will go where in the garden this year.

I’m a planner, it’s one of my favorite parts.  I plan what I’m going to plant and where it’s going to go in the garden this year.  I plan what plants will be next to the others keeping companion planting in mind.  I plan different designs because I hate how boring it is to look at a garden with plants in rows. I pour over the charts I’ve kept in past years to make sure I don’t plant the tomatoes and potatoes in the same place year after year.

I work on an order with High Mowing Organic Seeds that I continue to change week after week from October on, waiting until the last minute to place it.  I read their website for all the info I can gather about the new seeds I want to try growing.  There are always the tried and true to grow like last year’s Gold Rush yellow snap bean.  I cannot say enough about this bean, it was prolific.  I started picking beans in July and picked them until frost.  They weren’t those tough, tasteless beans either.  They were tender and tasty until the very end.  I lost count of how many pints I canned but I know Sue and I complained towards the end of the season every time we picked enough beans to can once more.  Of course now I’m glad I did.

The other plant I grew this year and introduced to everyone I knew was Joan Rutabagas.  I grow them every year and was a little in awe at how few people had never tried rutabagas (probably because they are my favorite vegetable).  They require a fairly long growing season but are very cold hardy so they weren’t dug until well into October.  I fed them to everyone.

Every year I pick one or two new plants to try. Some work out very well like the Gold Rush beans. Some don’t
but I feel like I haven’t given it a real chance unless I plant it a couple of years in a row. Each growing season is so different.  Here’s the problem, every year there are more and more things I want to plant but I don’t have the space to plant them all.  I have to cut down my list of seeds.

Sad, sad.

There are currently 27 items in my cart.  I probably should get rid of half.

What it really makes me do is plan a new garden in another spot on the property.  It’s always some nice piece of lawn that Bill has worked on for years.  He’s not going to like this.