Dreaming About Your Spring Garden

If your mailbox is anything like mine, you have received catalog after catalog of possible gift items over the last couple of months. Right after the first of the year however, that will change over to seed/garden catalogs. Full of beautiful pictures, these catalogs help gardeners cope with the winter blues as they pour over the pictures and descriptions to see what they want to add to their flower or vegetable gardens in the coming spring season.

For those of you in the lower latitudes in the U.S., don't dream too long though. Early spring vegetable seeds can start to be planted in some areas by the end of January. Transplants of warmer season vegetables or flowers that shouldn't be planted until after the last freeze need to be started indoors six to eight weeks before the average last freeze date. For many north Texas gardeners, that means getting your seeds started indoors by the end of January too.

So when those lovely seed catalogs full of tempting new varieties or old staples show up in your mailbox, instead of curling up with a good book on a cold, gray winter's day, grab a note pad and pencil along with those lovely catalogs and page through them and decide what you want to give space to in your 2015 garden. Seeds are an affordable option for "test driving" new plant varieties in your garden. (If you don't currently receive any seed catalogs, you can do an online search for "garden catalogs" and look at them online or request some to be sent to you.)