Garden Planning. Choosing the perfect vegetable or flower to grow in my gardens. For many, the new year means new plans, new goals, and a few new digits to remember as the time clock rolls into a brand new year. For me, of course, all the goals and planning for the future year happen, but the new year means garden catalogs start arriving. Which leads to planning for the coming growing season. Dreaming of what the garden will be like this coming year. Planning out just what I want to grow, where I want to grow it in my garden, and then….what will I do with it all! I am one of those rare breeds that look forward to preserving as much of my garden bounty as possible. I love to preserve food and will continue to do so for as long as I can. Canning, dehydrating, and freezing garden produce is part of my gardening life.
These gloriously colored catalogs are full of beautiful pictures of possibilities for my gardens. Receiving these in the mail is the equivalent of viewing the Sears wish book catalog prior to Christmas when I was a small child.
Some of my favorite garden catalogs are Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, R. H. Shumway, Park Seed, and Territorial Seed Company to name a few.
Each year I not only plant vegetable and flower seeds that I have saved from prior years, but I also pick one or two “new” to me varieties to plant and I order those seeds from trusted gardening companies. I typically pick an heirloom variety so that I can harvest seeds from them and use them for future gardens or share them with friends and family. That is…..if I can get them to grow. Typically, I have luck in growing many things here in my mountaintop gardens, but every now and then I have a huge fail. Typically, though, my biggest problem in growing anything here is to keep my lovely deer, rabbit, squirrel, and other wildlife visitors out of my gardens.
This year’s vegetable pic is the “Cherokee Purple Tomato” heirloom seed. A purple tomato sounds intriguing to me! I’ve been told these have a wonderful flavor as well.
This year’s flower of choice: is “Antique Sunflower Mix“. another heirloom seed variety. I’m excited about these particular seeds because they will offer a mix of sunflower varieties growing in my garden this year. I can envision the pops of glorious color spread throughout my garden that these seeds can provide. This mix of sunflower seeds also means I will have the opportunity to harvest seeds from multiple sunflower varieties. Bonus!
If you haven’t had the chance to check out our new website, I invite you to do so. I’ve added many new fun and exciting things, one of which is a page dedicated to some of my gardening adventures. This page is full of gorgeous photos I’ve taken of past gardens and floral pictures, showing some things I have grown. You can find that page here: Tara’s Gardening
And to close, I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite images I was able to capture throughout my gardening adventures.
