Back in the old days the seed catalogs came in January and we started planning our garden. It was fun seeing all the unusual varieties of vegetables and the glowing descriptions promised early, bountiful harvests.

Now, I get my gardening catalog (because it's not just seeds) electronically from the Territorial Seed Company. It took a long time to download, but is as good as a paper copy.



See that zucchini on the far right? I'm going to order the seeds for that variety in hopes it will do well in my container garden.

This is a regular-size zucchini surrounded by leaf lettuce. I'm thinking I can plant two or three more compact container zucchini in the same place.



Last year I ordered some tomato plants from Territorial Seed that were designed for short seasons like I have in the Colorado mountains. The company ships them at different times in the season, based on average last frost date for the area. Last year they came in May, but the plants were very small, so this year I am going for an April delivery, and I'll raise them inside for awhile and try some of those water wall green houses when I put them out.

Here are last summer's tomatoes at the end of July. The nights are too cool there for them to ripen on the vine, so I bring them inside when they reach a decent size and let them ripen inside.



There is another zucchini plant in that same planter. It produced fruit, but we had problems with end rot, I think caused by the soil lacking calcium.

Last spring I bought a bleeding heart plant and put it behind the house. Turned out it was right where the electricians were going to work installing the generator, so we'll see if the roots survived all the trauma.



In this next photo, what is left of the bleeding heart is on the left margin of the snow, where it's curved. The snow was blown away by the generator starting up to test itself.



I want to see whether that weekly shot of warm air helps or hurts the plants nearby.


Anyhow, I'm excited about the coming of spring.