Getting ready; winter in our home.

This year we are more interested in year-round gardening.  Mark looks forward to the winter months as a time of planning and preparing.  He has worked hard to developed a spreadsheet calendar/timeline to help him keep up with when he needs to do what.  Doing this on the computer lets him keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done.


Winter is when we start seriously looking at the different catalogs.  In the last post I showed you the table where we store our seeds.  Some of these are left overs from last year's planting.  Others are things we harvested from last years' plants.  It is a feeling of accomplishment to see that we are going to be able to re-plant without having to re-purchase!  After Mark figures out what he has on hand (another spreadsheet), he starts looking through catalogs to figure out who has the best product and the best price.  Some of the seed we purchase locally.

Winter is also a good time to read.  Our local library Co-Op is wonderful.  We can go online, look up a book, and request a hold on it.  If the book is at a different branch within the system it is shipped to our branch as soon as it is available. We find that it is often easier to get hold of gardening books in the fall and winter than in the spring.

Today I decided to do a photo shoot of the current catalogs and books we have on hand.  Some of these are library books, others are part of our library.  If you have a used book store or a library used book sale table, that can be a great place to pick up a bargain.  I did give Mark a little bit of a hard time about how much we have.  He pointed out that I did have some old catalogs and some repeats (Park Seed is bad about sending multiple copies of their catalogs).
Whatever!  Here is the big picture: please note that this is the couch where our 6 foot 4 inch Daniel can stretch out comfortably with plenty of room!

Here are Mark's personal favorites.  The only one missing is Harris Seed.  Since the titles are a little hard to read, they are: Pinetree Garden Seeds, Parks, and Totally Tomatoes.

Here are his three favorite books:

Yes, Dick Raymond is one of our favorites.

Stay tuned; more to come!