Sunday, January 10, 2010

The month that I am a gardener...

Some days, I channel my late grandmother. When this becomes painfully apparent is when seed catalogs come in. Burgess is the first one to hit my mailbox this season. I have about $70 worth of plants picked out, but see that it has a lousy reputation. Who knew seed companies had ratings?

I think, though, somewhere I'll order some Apache Blackberries. They are thornless, and goodness knows, I like to be able to pick blackberries in the summer. I prefer, though, to skip the ticks, chiggers, snakes, and thorns, if I can. So maybe I'll plant me one of these in my back yard. Unfortunately, companies that actually send plants, charge more for them. So I am not sure how many I can afford. Now, I am seeing that all the catalogs we used to get: Henry Field, Gurney, Spring Hill and others were all bought by one company and don't send out high quality plants any more. The one that I wanted to order from, Burgess, seems to be less that 50% in sending out viable plants.

I guess I'll have to wait patiently, and shop local. But really, what does local mean? Wal-Mart? Home Depot? Lowe's? Those are hardly local. Plant Outlet is pricey but everything I've bought there lives... Decisions decisions...

I did fine one immediately useful thing today: Conway is in zone 7. I've never been able to read those stupid maps, because they don't list the counties. But this site told me. Now I am informed.

1 comment:

Monda said...

I'm crushed to hear about Gurney, Henry Field, and Spring Hill. I used to spend a good part of January dreaming over the Gurney catalog.

Yes, we're Zone 7. I'm sure it tells you to wait until March 15th to plant, but it's a lie propagated by some out-of-towner. March 20 and no sooner or you'll regret it.

I miss my greenhouse.