“Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with the dream.”
-Josephine Nuese

It’s a frosty morning here in Ohio, but I guarantee I’m not the only gardener with spring planting on the mind. For the past few years, I’ve been growing a variety of vegetables, herbs, and flowers from seed. While I won’t actually drop any seeds into dirt for another few months, this time of year is when it all begins.

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Once the seed catalogs start arriving, I begin plotting. I pour through each of them, scribbling down notes about what all I want to stick in the yard this year. Then, I look at the previous years garden journal, and spot that I already made notes there about what I wanted to plant in the upcoming season. Past me is practical. Current me is shouting to the cats about how many new tomato varieties I want to try.

Next, I head to the local garden center, and my eyes glaze over as I start tossing seed packets into my handbasket at random, entirely forgetting about the wish lists I’d worked on at home.

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Once the dust settles, I sit down to decide what I really want to tackle in the upcoming season. Last year was my most successful seed-growing venture to date. I finally invested in some decent grow lights, the whole production was moved to a cat-free location (two years ago, disaster struck my wee seedlings, in the form of an adventurous calico kitten), and I managed to stick to a watering schedule.

I grew beef steak and roma tomatoes, fennel, basil, oregano, dill, and parsley, started some madder for dyeing, and later in the season, I direct-sowed several types of sunflowers, cosmos, marigolds, pole beans, sugar pie pumpkins, arugula (rocket), and bibb lettuce.

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I’ll go into further details about the planting process in future posts, but for now, here are my Seed-Planting Plans:

Veggies
-Carrots (Lake Valley Seed- Heirloom Tendersweet Carrots)
-Leeks (Burpee- Dawn Giant Leeks)
-Lettuce (Burpee- Bibb Blend Lettuce)
-Lettuce (Renee’s Garden- Renee’s Baby Leaf Lettuce Blend)
-Microgreens (Burpee- Burpee’s Mix Microgreens)
-Parsnips (Botanical Interests- All American Parsnips)
-Peppers (Renee’s Garden- Heirloom Italian Sweet Peppers Sunset Mix)
-Pie Pumpkins (Burpee- Heirloom Small Sugar Pie Pumpkins)
-Pole Beans (Kentucky Wonder pole bean seeds that I harvested from last seasons crop)
-Tomatoes (Burpee- Druzba Tomatoes)
-Tomatoes (Burpee- San Marzano Tomatoes)
Herbs
-Basil (Renee’s Garden- Italian Pesto Basil)
-Dill (Lake Valley Seed- Heirloom Mammoth Dill)
-Fennel (Lake Valley Seed- Heirloom Florence Fennel)
-Oregano (I haven’t bought this yet)
-Parsley (Botanical Interests- Giant of Italy Flat-Leaf Parsley)
-Parsley (Botanical Interests- Moss Curled Parsley)
-Thyme (Renee’s Garden- French Thyme)
Flowers
-Chamomile (Lake Valley Seed- German Chamomile)
-Marigolds (Burpee- Happy Days Marigolds)
-Sunflowers (Autumn Beauty Sunflower seeds that I harvested last season)
-Sunflowers (Mammoth Sunflower seeds that I harvested last season)
-Zinnias (Renee’s Garden- Berry Basket Bouquet Zinnias)

In these weird pandemic times, planting seeds feels hopeful. It’s a nice distraction from the world, and, at least to me, few things feel better than the joy of watching your seeds sprout and turn into food and plants that you can later harvest and enjoy.

Happy gardening!