It's right around this time of year as I start to notice and feel the days lengthening and then I get those idgies… I want to get out and see what's growing, even if temperatures here are still hovering at freezing and below. Since gardening in snow and digging earth that is frozen solid isn’t practical, I begin to dream up new plans for the pond and garden.
Do you grow from seed? Or do you get starter plants? Do you plot out where you’ll plant things in your garden or are you like me — at some point get so rushed to put things in some go in willy-nilly… wherever there’s room?
Right now what’s keeping me chugging along towards Spring are:
But it’s catalog time!!! I’ve just started to peruse through them to get me through these cold winter days. Since I started this diary earlier this week, the new Plants Delights catalog has arrived.
Purchasing plants online is more expensive, but it allows you to expand on plant variety — especially if your growing season is short or you have lousy local GCs that don’t stock variety. There have been a number of online plant sites I’ve purchased from — pretty much relying on Dave’s Garden reviews to great success.
Plant Delights has a good solid variety of plants. They’re well grown and packed great!
Some other online plants sources I’ve purchased from:
Bluestone Perennials
Annie’s Annuals and Perennials
Flowers by the Sea
Vincent’s Gardens
Almost Eden
I started online plant shopping primarily because I’m such a salvia and sage nut (butterflies love salvia). And a wide variety of salvia simply isn’t available by me. And then our dear friend LICenter got me hooked on cuphea!! And that was another reason to look for sources and to explore other varieties of cuphea — a hummingbird and bee magnet!
It doesn’t help that most of these plants I get are tender and which means I wind up pulling them in to see if I can winter them over (please, let me win the lottery so I can build a greenhouse!), but this also does help temper my urge to buy everything!
Quick summary of the online plant sources above (from my experience with them)
Bluestone Perennials — good source for very well grown plants. Hardier perennials. Great customer service. I had a problem with one plant that arrived — they responded quickly and it was replaced!
Annie’s Annuals and Perennials — I buy cuphea here. I especially love the minnie mouse cuphea which I’ve found difficult if not impossible to find locally. This is one cuphea that doesn’t winter over well. I can keep it going, but it takes a while for it to bounce back to flower in the warm season.
Flowers by the Sea — wonderful source for salvia!!!!
Vincent’s Gardens — another great source for salvia — and HUGE plants (for online source)
Almost Eden — All of the plants are tender for me (zone 7b), but they have great salvia and cuphea choices — and the plants very well grown. Great customer service, too.
And for those curious as to the Plant Delights 2018 catalog cover…
So — how do you get through the winter months? What plant and seed catalogs do you recommend? And what are your plans so far??
Me? I’m gonna plant a LOT of tithonia (photo on top and what I’m dreaming of these days….)