My favorite wish books are arriving: the seed catalogs. The pictures are gorgeous. The varieties are tempting. In a month I will be getting garden seeds.
After drooling over the seed catalogs, it’s time to settle down into some serious garden planning. Getting garden seeds shouldn’t mean a pile of unopened packets sitting in the seed box for years.
Serious Garden Planning
I do have a fair sized garden. However, it is finite. Mature plants take up space and don’t do well crammed in making both growing and harvesting difficult.
Every year I start with a garden diagram and a list of must grows. These are penciled into various beds. Leftover spots can be filled in with other plants.
Before going wild with the order form, there is another consideration: What will be done with the crop? Why purchase and grow a crop no one will eat?
My garden is in the Ozarks. Growing conditions aren’t the same as other places. Plants get hit with heat, humidity, flood and drought. Lots of vegetables don’t do well under these conditions.
Wild consumers are another consideration for me. Although we love eating sweet corn, I never grow it. The raccoons move in and demolish the crop and I refuse to camp out in the patch with a gun every night until it is picked.
Maturation time is important too. Tomatoes taking over three months to mature a crop are not on my list. Cabbage and other cole crops must mature before the weather gets too hot in summer or too cold in late fall.
Back to the Catalogs
Once the planning is done, it’s time for getting garden seeds picked out and ordered. My orders go in the first week of January as those leek and cabbage seeds need to be started by February.
My spring garden is a going concern already with garlic and onions. The cabbage (Savoy preferably) and leeks go into the garden in March. I have almost three months to get ready.