Sunday, December 26, 2010

Planting the Seeds for Next Year's Garden

For several weeks now, the seed catalogs have been arriving in the mail. First to show up was old reliable Thompson & Morgan, followed quickly by most of my other standards: Nichols Garden Nursery, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, just to name a few. Because of the Christmas rush, they've been stacked up in the conservatory. There they sit, speaking softly but persistently, just waiting for the holidays to end so that I have whole days to wallow in them.

And wallow I always have, unfortunately letting what my husband refers to as the "gimme-wants" dictate my purchase lists. There at least, I've been able to exercise some discipline. It's a ridiculous exercise, but eventually it works. I go through each catalog, damn the torpedoes, and put everything that catches my fancy make the initial list. Then, I go through a second time and whittle it down considerably. Once round two is done, I start comparison shopping, making sure to get the best price I can on everything I want. Only then do the orders get placed. Regrettably, my garden record-keeping skills have been lax over the years. However, I finally got tired of wasting time and money buying seeds that a) I didn't need or b) didn't perform as well as I would have liked, so last year I got serious about documentation and now I'll be able to order wisely. In fact, I got so serious last year that I gave my husband a good laugh one morning - he saw a list on the conservatory table that was captioned, "DO NOT PURCHASE THESE SEEDS. NONE. NOT ANY." I told you I was serious.......

No comments:

Post a Comment