Seed catalogs are coming!

Amy, I'm afraid I am obsessed with seeds. Fortunately, I turned it into a business--but still, I buy more seeds than any human being could ever grow. It's shameful. However, everything I buy is heirloom, many are on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, so I hope I'm helping to introduce my customers to interesting varieties. Last year, I grew 130 varieties of tomatoes--it was so much fun! I adore Thai Pink Turtle Egg, Chocolate Cherry, Kellogg's Breakfast, Dr. Wyche, to name a few. Happy growing! Julie

Oh Amy, The Pinetree catalogue just arrived and so it begins. I'm also addicted. When dating my wife 38 years ago I used to sit with my father-in-law in Westford Mass, look at the catalogues and drink coffee for hours into a winter evening. He knew a lot about each variety and what he didn't know he made up. I miss him so much. He didn't make much money and his one acre garden provided most of the food for a wife and eight children. My wife tells me that she would sit with him at the table and watch him make lists of the seeds he needed and the new varieties he wanted each year, then he would show them to her mother who handled the budget and she would tell him it was too expensive and he would have to trim the list. It made my wife feel bad because she saw how much he loved his garden and because of that she never says a word about anything I spend on seeds. Here in South Carolina I've found that Marion tomatoes do well and I grow several plants each year. This past year I grew Kelloggs Breakfast for the first time, and I agree with Julia, they're fantastic. They're more susceptable to blight than Marion or Roma but worth the trouble.

Oregon Sugar Pod Peas from Nichols Garden Nursery in Oregon & online. This is the fully-round, crisp edible pod, with vines that grow 6' tall & more. They need a sturdy trellis, like Johanna's photo in the Garden Tips & Tricks discussion. I prepare the planting trenches in the fall & plant the peas pre-sprouted & dusted with legume innoculant before we are done with hard freezes. Harvests have been long & abundant. Alaska variety Nasturtiums from Stokes Catalog & online last time looked. Alaska grows like a 2.5' - 3' tall & wide hedge, with masses of extra-big leaves & fewer flowers than other varieties. The leaves make great sandwiches with home-made, whole-grain bread & garlic mayonnaise. Next time I grow it i want to pickle-brine some leaves for a new taste in stuffed grape leaves. Cleome from any source makes a beautiful, bushy 3-4' tall flowering plant & is an annual. Flower heads come in white, pink & shades of rosy pink & leaves look like Cannabis. You don't find Cleome in the nurseries because the seedlings grow tall so fast they are hard to handle commercially. If you don't know Cleome yet, search for it on Google Images for many views. It is much showier than any of the photos. I used white Cleome to fill in a Golden Currant hedge before it was fully established. Cleome has a strong, spiny, trunk of a stem. Although the source is listed as Carribean, it turned out to be very frost resistant & was one of the last things blooming in late fall here in zone 4.