The pristine blanket of white beyond my window is beautiful, but it makes it hard to think about gardening. We gardeners fiddle with our houseplants, force a few paper whites, but what we'd really like to do is force spring to hurry up and take us out to the garden. In the meantime we pour over the seed catalogs and dream.
Winter is the one time when our gardens reach perfection, the delphiniums as tall and blue as those in the catalogs, the dahlias as big as dinner plates and the phlox free of mildew. No blight withers the tomato plants, the potatoes have no scabs and the blossoms of our runner beans gleam like rubies on their trellis. Those dreams may not come true as summer rolls around, but right now we can let our imaginations indulge.
I don't know why brousing through the seed catalogs can fill our heads with such splendid visions that there's no longer any room in the memory files for the garden ills that have beset us in past summers. I don't get carried away by other types of catalogs, suddenly convinced that the latest skin cream will change the aging face in my mirror, or the new Prince racquet will instantly improve my erratic tennis strokes. Yet ads and pictures of garden plants always inspires me with renewed enthusiasm.
So far I've received 18 catalogs for 2005. Yesterday I curled up in a sunny window to make some garden dreams. Back in the days when I counted every penny, I'd go through the catalogs with a calculator comparing prices. I was ordering only vegetable seeds and maybe one or two packets of flower seeds and had very few dreams, depending on hand-me-down perennials from friends to enhance my flower beds. Old habits die hard so even though I no longer count pennies, I study the vegetables in the catalogs first and do little dreaming until I turn to the flowers.
All the catalogs that carry vegetables start with A for artichokes. I love all the succulent leaves of this perrenial dipped in hollandaise, but I've never try to grow the plant. I'm suspicious that it will not possibly succeed past its first year. If any of you have raised artichokes successfully, please tell me I'm wrong.
The second A is asparagus, another perennial vegetable. After many years of problems, we have a very successful asparagus bed, well worth all the trials that preceded it. We now get far more asparagus than we can eat and must freeze the excess. Before last summer all the asparagus I froze was so soggy when thawed that I always threw it in the blender with milk and cream and turned it into soup. Last June instead of blanching, I merely washed the stalks and put them straight into the freezer. What a difference. They are almost as delicious as fresh asparagus.
Besides the old standbys, I've gotten two new catalogs this year. I've been perusing one called Seeds of Change (www.seedsofchange.com or 1-888-762-7333). Seeds of Change offers 100% Certified organic seeds, and is priced accordingly - that means EXPENSIVE. This is a great catalog, however, if you're a purist who wants only organic produce. Their selection of tomato seeds is extensive. It got me thinking about the really delicious tomatoes we ate in Italy, full of real old-fashioned flavor that can't be found in the modern hybrids. The catalog carries an heirloom variety called Costaluto Genovese, which is described as "an old Italian variety, very flavorful."
Trouble is I don't think I will be raising my own seedlings this year. I started my seedlings too early last year and then never got around to repotting any of them. As a consequence all too many either died or were so leggy and unhappy when I transplanted them to the garden that they never really recovered. So this year I plan to do a lot of cross-country skiing instead.
Besides the fun of fussing with soil and seeds, raising your own seedlings is a way to insure you get the varieties you want. So often the newest hybrids or the special heirloom varieties whose glowing pictures fill the catalogs aren't to be found in the plant nurseries. Most nurseries grow the popular varieties like Big Boy and Early Girl.
Fortunately the other new catalog I've gotten, the Territorial Seed Company (www.territorialseed.com or 1-800-626-3131) carries seedlings as well as seeds and has ten whole pages of tomato varieties. When I found a tomato called Viva Italia, I ordered two seedlings. Then remembering my failure last year to grow anything but green pepper seedlings out of a packet of five different colors, I ordered two yellow pepper plants. I can never find them in the nurseries.
Sorry, I always get hung up on the vegetables when I look at the catalogs. It's far easier to dream about the perfect flower garden, picturing where to put that gorgeous yellow peony you've ordered or how to fit that striking new lupine in the bed without pulling up the Shasta daisies. But just in case you think vegetables are boring, take a look at the photograph below! In China they don't carve pumpkins, they carve watermelons. I've never grown watermelons and probably never will, but I thought this photo was so magnificent I had to include it. If you'd like to see more, just type "Watermelon Sculptures" into Google.
Enjoy your own catalog dreams but just remember that old verse by Anonymous-
I know, for experience teaches,
come summer it won't be the same,
But I'm knee-deep in snow
so my garden can grow
just the way that the catalogs claim.
