Garden Planning Time

Moon Report: Waning Gibbous, 92% of full

Yes. It is December. The big late winter seed catalog won't be here before February. However, I'm planning for the new garden like mad. All the descriptions offered in seed catalogs and online are very tempting--why choose one when ten sound great?

My goal: to can, freeze, store enough food to cut the grocery bill more than half. It will also be much cheaper to grow my own fresh veggies than paying for them at the store. Although one reason to do so is to know exactly where my food is from, my primary reason is that half the veggies at the grocery stores around here are less than in their prime state. Sometimes they have been picked over or sometimes they just don't look that appetizing.

I am looking for open pollinated plants--something that I can save seed from to reproduce plants the following year.

Helpful Seed Places

Seed Savers Exchange http://www.seedsavers.org/
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds http://rareseeds.com/seeds/
Heirloom Seeds http://www.heirloomseeds.com/

What I am planning on at the moment:

1. Garlic--German Extra Hardy (already in the ground)
2. Onions--this is one I have yet to decide on.
3. Spinach--Monnopa
4. Lettuce--Amish Deer Tongue, Cracoviensis, Green Oakleaf, and Slobolt
5. Peas--Shelling: Alderman, Green Arrow; Snap: Amish Snap, Sugar Daddy
6. Cucumber--Mexican Sour Gherkin
7. Winter Squash--Thelma Sanders' Sweet Potato (acorn-type), Musquee de Provence, and either Amish Pie or Blue Hubbard.
8. Carrots--St. Valery and Dragon
9. Celery--Tendercrisp
10. Beets--Chioggia
11. Beans--Pole: Mayflower, Good Mother Stallard, Lazy Housewife, and Rattlesnake Snap; Bush: Empress, Hutterite, and White Marrowfat
12. Soybeans--Shirofumi
13. Peppers--Sweet: Bull Nose Bell, Quadrato d'Asti Giallo, Quadrato d'Asti Rosso, Chervena Chushka, and Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying Pepper; Hot(ish): Black Hungarian, and Hinkelhatz
14. Tomatoes--Brandywine, Ananas Noire, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Blondkopfchen, Black Krim, Marmande, and Great White

I'm still looking into maybe growing mustard and okra and asparagus...