2002 Seed Catalogs

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Got a 2002 Thompson and Morgan seed catalog in the mail today. Anyone else got any 2002s yet? Seems kinda early....

-- Anonymous, October 23, 2001

Answers

Not yet. Territorial's isn't due out until December, according to their website. Sheesh. I would love to place my Spring 2002 order RIGHT NOW while I have my garden stuff fresh in my mind (yeah, I write notes too but I forget stuff anyway.)

My seed order depends on how much more garden space I'm going to do. I want to add more room for corn plus add a huge berry garden (to get the ones I have now out of the original garden.) I have overwintering cole crops hogging the early spring spaces now, have garlic growing in spaces taking up spring sowing room....yikes! I also want to move my blueberries into a new area. Two things I need to consider, though....how can I work/commute full time and realistically "do" this expanded garden, and also how much pasture do I want to steal back to make more garden space? Will my sheep get mad at me?

Always something to consider...

Polly, you are the queen of working long hours and growing your food. How do you manage?

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2001


Ohhhh! Does this mean I get to wear a sparkley tiara with my garden fairy tu-tu?! Someday, I gotta find me an artist to draw some of the silly things I see in my head....

Part of the way that I am able to garden the way I do is my schedule. I know that everyone can't arrange their schedule to suit them, so this won't work for a lot of folks. Not to mention that most folks think I'm nuts for working this shift! I've got my schedule arranged so that I work 3 - 12 hour days a week. I work Tues/Wed/Sat one week; then Sun/Thur/Fri the next. And I always work night shift - 7pm to 7:30am. Since I don't leave for my commute until 6pm, (home by 0830)I have all day to work in the garden, or harvest or put by before I go in to work. I sleep the next day, and then after I work the 2nd night, I come home and can either work in the garden then, or take a short nap and work in the garden in the afternoon. I only have to "waste" 3 days every two weeks sleeping, unless I work overtime. I try to schedule my overtime for 11pm to 7:30 am only, so that I have the 6 or so hours that I don't need to sleep available during daytime hours. I try to schedule vacations around certain harvest seasons - like the ^$@*^&$ strawberries since I sell them in town, or used to - thinking about changing that business! I also try to avoid too much OT when I've got certain crops coming on.

I don't consider my garden to be a job - I don't HAVE to do it to eat, I want to, it's my hobby, so I keep telling myself that I'm having fun! And it's also my therapy - Yanking out weeds when I'm crabby ( it's just amazing how the moon signs for destroying weeds often coincide with PMS!), or just "grounding" myself by sitting with my hands in the soil is so healing. I also use some of the crap that I've learned at work to manipulate myself - for instance, shorter rows make it seem like less work, even though there are more of them. Telling myself that I only have to weed one bed instead of the whole garden gets me out the door, then when I get out there, I often end up doing several beds. And if I've got crops coming on hot and heavy and I'm too whupped to deal with them, I just tell Pop to tell his buddies to come out, or have him pick it and take it in to the Senior center - that way I get to feel good about being lazy!

Another thing I do that is almost impossible for most gardeners (me included!) is to limit what I grow. If you don't like it, if you don't eat it, if you won't preserve it - then why put energy into growing it?! (Flowers are the exception!) I wouldn't have a stalk of rhubarb on the place if it weren't for Hubby, yet do you think I can get that darn man to go out there and cut some so I can make him a pie? And I've already laid down the law on the green beans - if I don't get some help snapping them next year, there won't BE any home canned green beans in the future! Some things are just too labor intensive for the amount of them we eat. I don't grow celery or main crop potatoes, I buy them. I do raise some for new potatoes to cook with the green beans, etc.. I raise beets every other year and pickle enough for 2 years. I still grow the golf ball carrots, but we like those little ones from the store, so we buy most of our carrots. I try to limit myself to just 6 types of tomatoes a year. Blew it this year, thanks to Pop, buddy Mike and Unc, who kept bringing me seed packets to start! And next year is shot too, thanks to all those heirloom seeds that Sharon brought me!

I operate my main "eating" garden in a slightly warped square foot method. I don't double dig, I sort of lasagne. Since I am short and chubby, my beds are only three feet wide, as are my path ways. I do also use some wide rows out in the row garden. Since I garden with Pop, we kind of cooperate (SNORT!) on style. Okay, maybe co-exist would be a better word! I have a tractor mounted regular tiller and also a split row tiller that we use to prep and till the row garden. If I need to grow a lot of a certain thing for canning or freezing, it goes in the row garden - that way if I just want something for supper, I don't have to walk so far; or face the unending rows for a few peas to toss on the salad. Succession planting seems to work with sweet corn, but it seems no matter when I plant my beans, they all get ready at the same time. This is where overtime pay and neighbor kids come in handy. Stock up on pop and snacks and hire the kids to harvest!

This year, I used an idea that Jay had posted for square foot gardening and made my planting squares ahead of time on my dinner break and dead times at work, and after dark at home. I used cheapo paper towels for the squares and Elmer's glue to dot the seeds on them. I could turn a 3X3 bed with the fork, toss the big clods and an extra shovel full or two of soil on the grater (hardware cloth on a 2X2 frame over the wheelbarrow); then lay down my squares and cover them with sifted soil from the barrow in about 10 minutes, without breaking a sweat. Tack a piece of chicken wire over the bed frame to keep the cats from digging before the plants sprout and it's done. Beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, chard, okra, radishes and some other things were done this way. Peas were done on a long strip of toweling cut 6 inches wide for a double row. Ditto beans, along with some on newspaper for planting bigger beds. Started my tomatoes and broccoli in recycled plug trays. Mix potting soil, vermiculite together, moisten with hot water with a couple packets of knox gelatin mixed in, plop in the plug trays and plant.

I mix and match the plants in my square foot garden to confuse the bugs and Pop, and to do some companion planting. Last year, in 2 9X3 bed, I planted a double row of peas down the middle, then 7 broccoli plants to each side of the peas, then onions on the outside edges. The onions didn't do as well as I like, so next year I'll try radishes instead - (Ha! Pop will never find them there!!) Cover the broccoli with panty hose covers to thwart the cabbage butterflies to save time picking off those darn green worms - I'm getting to where I can't see the little suckers quite so well anymore! I alternated towel squares of carrot seeds with those of spinach; beets with lettuce, onions with chard, think plants that grow up alternated with plants that grow down. Some beds I also planted a deterrent in the center, surrounded by plants - fer instance, dill in the center of a 3X3 bed with cabbage all around and lettuce tucked in here and there. I use tall plants to shade heat sensitive crops, lettuce and spinach under the okra for example.

I don't have to weed rows because my beds and paths are permanent in the square foot garden. For my paths, I put down a layer or two of heavy appliance box cardboard from the ex's business, and covered it with a deep layer of wood chips that I got from the tree service. Very little weed pulling, and they come out easy from the chips anyway. I plant close together in the beds and the paper towels also helped to block some of the weed seed below them from germinating or coming up. When I started my raised beds, I put a dozen or so layers of newspaper in the bottoms of the frames, soaked them to start the decomposition process, then added my soil and compost. I solarized a couple of beds with clear plastic stapled to the frames when I saw a lot of weed seeds in the manure I topped them with. My new perennial fruit and herb beds that will surround some peach trees I put in last year have the heavy cardboard in the bottoms, covered with composted manure. Any new beds will be started the same way.

Tomatoes are out of the square foot beds next year and back out in the row garden. Well, except for a couple of Juliet that may go up in the flower bed by the house! Indeterminate are going to go up on fence posts because I'm getting too old and fat to play hide and seek with a bunch of 'maters! Determinates are going in staggered double rows with lots of mulch between 'em. They are also going to get planted when Pop isn't home so that I can put them far enough apart that I don't feel like I'm playing Twister when I go out to pick them! Pumpkins are going to surround the sweet corn patch and be allowed to grow back into the corn. Melons will be planted in 6 foot wide strips left between the staggered plantings of sweet corn.

As far as expanding the garden goes, I have a two acre patch available to me for "garden". It has a permanent asparagus patch across the North end of it that I would like to move someday. And someday, I hope to put a barn smack in the middle of it! We plant a LOT of sweet corn; usually 4 plantings of 8 rows each, the length of the field - 350 feet or so. I also have my bleep-blapping strawberries out there - 21 rows, 100 feet long. Plus the row garden wherever we don't have anything else planted. The balance of the ground has been in sunflowers the past two years and I plan to continue doing that - I drive in from the east when I come home from work, and it never fails to make me grin to see all those happy yellow faces smiling at me!

One thing I do plan to do is plant some food bearing plants in with the ornamentals and under fruit trees. Strawberries can be tucked in almost anywhere, asparagus looks good in the back of flowers and rhubarb is fairly ornamental - could you tuck some stuff in along your house or outbuildings, or along a sidewalk or driveway? Wide rows and raised beds save a lot of room too, especially with plants staggered in the beds to maximize space, and with multiple plantings in one area - a large late season plant surrounded by smaller, fast growing crops in the spring - oh yeah, succession planting, that's what they call it!! As far as the sheep go, I don't have a clue what to suggest about them!!

-- Anonymous, October 27, 2001


You are truly amazing. I'm printing this off and putting it in my gardening library for continual reference. Thanks!

-- Anonymous, October 28, 2001

Printing..printing.. Polly you kill me. Are you sure we weren't seperated at birth or something? That sense of humor!!!!

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

This year, I used an idea that Jay had posted for square foot gardening and made my planting squares ahead of time on my dinner break and dead times at work, and after dark at home. I used cheapo paper towels for the squares and Elmer's glue to dot the seeds on them. I could turn a 3X3 bed with the fork, toss the big clods and an extra shovel full or two of soil on the grater (hardware cloth on a 2X2 frame over the wheelbarrow); then lay down my squares and cover them with sifted soil from the barrow in about 10 minutes, without breaking a sweat. Tack a piece of chicken wire over the bed frame to keep the cats from digging before the plants sprout and it's done. Beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, chard, okra, radishes and some other things were done this way. Peas were done on a long strip of toweling cut 6 inches wide for a double row. Ditto beans, along with some on newspaper for planting bigger beds.

Hah! This is a GREAT idea! I'm gonna try this next spring.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001



Yep, I thought ole Jay was absolutely brilliant when I read that idea, too. Did one of those head-slap-well-DUH thingies at the simplicity of it all! With your 4X4 beds, Jim, it will make companion planting soooo easy!

Ali, since I predate your arrival by about 10 years, I don't think we can get away with claiming twinsies....I see us more as the homesteading version of Thelma and Louise....;o) (Don't tell Richard I said that!)

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001


Can I be Geena Davis??? She's soooo tall. I might get a nose bleed from the altitude though. Richard might like a wife he doesn't have to bend to smooch! I read about the glue and paper towel thing one time last winter and decided to try it with green beans. Laid out the glue and beans in rows rather than squar method. Then I forgot where I put them. They are still in the kids craft supply cupboard...there's a duuuuh for ya! Sooo, whats going in this years garden? Mystery Keeper tomatoes were my best tasting tomato this year so they will go in again. My Black Valentine green beans do better every year so I keep them. I have lots of seed for Potomac pole beans and homesteader peas so I can do good plantings of both. The Potomacs I am still unsure of cookingwise. (dry or green..which is it best for). I will definiely do quatre saisons lettuce again if I can come across seed and deer tongue lettuce bombed in the spring but is doing fabulously this fall. I want to plant squash next spring..I have never grown winter squash but we are coming to like it. So far Butternut is my favorite for flavor. I need to get more Dascha Barinka garlic for the next planting . Its a hardneck variety. Plans plans plans...I better write this stuff down somewhere...

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2001

Oh yeah sure - YOU get to be the tall, pretty one; I get to be the old, short, homicidal one - like THAT'S fair!

Oh wait.... I am the old, short, homicidal one!! Okay, no problema!

You said your frost free season was something like early June to mid September, didn't you? Do you have to grow any special short season tomatoes or anything? What are Black Valentine green beans like? Do you save your own seeds or buy them each year? I haven't tried to save bean seed since I grow green and wax together in the rows/beds since that's the way we like to eat them. You told me about your garden in e-mail; why don't you tell the rest of the folks about it here?

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2001


WOOO-HOOO!!!! Gotta Stark Bros. catalog in the mail yesterday!! Happy dance! Happy dance! I'm so glad to see them back! When we had the commercial orchard, we bought all of our stock from Stark's and always had good results.

I started planting a home mini-orchard last year with 4 peach trees; I think I'll add cherries this year. Apples are on the list, and are easy to grow; but I can also buy them from a nearby orchard so they will probably be the last trees I plant, since I figure I ought to concentrate on the stuff that is hard to find or outrageously priced first.

I'm planning on apples, peaches, nectarines, apricots, (that will freeze out every year, but everyone needs to have one impossible dream!) pears, plums and cherries. Then, I'll swipe some starts from Uncle Ivan's raspberry patch - so I won't have to walk so far for dessert! And, of course, the stupid strawberries. Pop is threatening to double the size of the strawberry patch and go U-Pick this year...I'm threatening to lock him in the attic 'til fall.....

The other seed catalogs have started trickling in; Pinetree, Park's, Seymour's, Harris and Jung's. It's going to seem strange not to get the oversize Gurney's catalog this year; and no Henry Field either. I'm wondering if the folks at Pinetree would be willing to send me another catalog; mine is getting pretty tattered from being drug around!

I've been sorting through seeds and ended up with 15 types of tomatoes between what Sharon brought me and what I had left-over. And I found at least 5 more kinds in the Pinetree catalog. Pop's gonna kill me if I plant 20 kinds of tomatoes! Note to self: Buy deadlock bolt for attic door...

So, y'all got your orders made out yet?

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001


So, y'all got your orders made out yet?

Yes, but the seed catalogs keep coming in and I keep having to revise my orders!

I want to order WAY too many tomato varieties this year, too - I'm gonna have to take out a loan! What is it about tomatoes that causes such addiction in some people? Oh well, as far as addictions go, I guess things could be worse... ;-)

Here is a *partial* list of the tomatoes that I'd like to try this year:

Brandywine Red (Landis Valley Strain)
Lisa King
Amish Paste
Wild Cherry
Black
Black Krim
Yellow Currant
Goliath
Big Zac (Hybrid)
Suncherry (Hybrid)
Grapette (Hybrid)
Cluster Grande (Hybrid)
Mini Pearls (Hybrid)
Paul Robeson

(sigh)

If I end up growing all of them I gonna have to expand the garden quite a bit! ;-)

BTW, if anyone has experience with any of the above, I'd appreciate any feedback on how well they performed for ya.

The only one listed above that I've had previous experience with is the Lisa King variety - it's one of the few OP tomatoes that I've found to do well in my area.

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001



Amish Paste are plentiful, very dependable.

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001

Hey, Jim-Bob! Sharon sent me a bunch of Amish Paste seeds; you want me to forward some on to you? She had a Merry Christmas post on here, offering some seeds. I swear you're reading that tomato list right out of the Pinetree catalog; sounds like the ones I want to plant!

Right now, I have on hand at least a few of the following tomato seeds: Amish Paste, Better Boy, Juliet, Brandywine, Homestead, Lemon Boy, Plum Dandy, Italian Drying (Principe Borghese, Red Current, Rose, Siletz, Sugar Lump, Sweet Cluster, and Yellow Pear.

I plan to buy: Mini Pearls, Sun Sugar, Tip Top, Opalka, and La Rossa; all from Pinetree. I like their small pack size. And price. And selection. And the funny stuff that they say about the seeds in their descriptions!

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2001


Hey, Jim-Bob! Sharon sent me a bunch of Amish Paste seeds; you want me to forward some on to you?

Sure! I'll e-mail you my mailing address. I'd be happy to send you some money to cover your expenses, too. Or I could mail you an SASE... Whatever works for ya. Thanks! :-)

I swear you're reading that tomato list right out of the Pinetree catalog; sounds like the ones I want to plant!

You're right. Six or seven of the varieties are coming from Pinetree - I usually have a substantial order for them every year.

I just got my Johnny's catalog a couple of days ago and they have two or three varieties of tomato that I'd like to try, too. If I keep going like this I'll have to plow up the whole back forty! ;-)

-- Anonymous, December 31, 2001


Send that addy on to me, Jim; and I'll send out the seeds.

I'm busy with the almanac and highlighter pens, planning my indoor planting schedule. Found Louise Riotte's "Planetary Planting" at the UBS; most of it is basic gardening stuff, but she does have a good section on planting by the moon signs that goes into more detail than my almanac; or even Llewellen's moon sign book. Anyone else use the signs?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2002


Jim,

I can send you some Paul Robeson seeds. They are a couple years old but germinated great last year and we plan on using them again. This is one of our very best toms! It's much earlier than the catalog says and pretty darn disease resistant too.

Hey anybody have a handful of Fortex bean seeds they would be willing to share with me. We grew them years ago and I want some more for fresh eating this year. I just can't bring myself to buy them from Johnny's as the price is high and it is all we need from them. I'll happily send you some tom. seeds!!! Kim

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2002



Polly: I just sent you the info. Thanks again.

Kim: Thanks much! I've sent you the info, too.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2002


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