Gardening starts with seeds in the winter.  Today, with all the snow, feels like the *perfect* day to be starting garden plans.  Here’s what I’ve got:

From the Home Depot sale on Saturday:

veggies:

• Peas: Dark seeded early perfection
• Peas: Sugar Snap
• Mesclun Salad Greens

flowers:

• Marigolds: scarlet starlet
• Cosmos: bright lights
• Oriental poppies: Pizzicato mix (amapola oriental)
• Sweet peas: Royal Family
• Zinnia: envy (It’s chartreuse!!!)
• Nasturtium: Empress of India
• Zinnia: candy cane
• Sweet William: tall double
• Viola: Helen Mount

Also pulling out of the fridge from last year

veggies/herbs:

• Basil: summerlong
• Basil: dark opal purple
• Beets: Detroit Dark Red
• Lettuce: little Ceasar
• Greens: Mesclun spicy (raddichio, endive, mustard, etc)
• Smart Pickle Cucumber
• Broccoli Raab
• Spinach: Early Prolific

flowers:

• oriental poppy “Brilliant red”
• sunflower: Mammoth Grey Stripe
• cosmos: bright lights (oops!  Forgot I had this!  it’s a 2006 packet, though, and I got limited germination last year)
• Zinnia: candy cane (same as the Cosmos.  At least I know what I like!)
• Sweet peas (recovered seeds from last year’s plants)
• Catnip
• Nasturtium: Empress of India (ok, this is embarrassing.)

On their way from Thompson & Morgan:

• Cauliflower: Gitano F1 Hybrid (Romanesco)
• Datura meteloides: Evening Fragrance
• Swiss Chard: Bright Lights
• Alcea rosea: Chater’s Double Icicle
• Nigella damascena Moody Blues
• Nicotiana: x sanderae: Fragrant Cloud
• Zaluzianskya capensis seeds: Night Phlox
• Radish: Rainbow Mixed
• Lobelia cardinalis: Queen Victoria
• Buphthalmum speciosum
• Myrrhis odorata

Yet to find:

• variegated horseradish
• Borage (Borago officinalis)

I planted a lot of shrubs last spring, but the dogs have eaten or trampled pretty much all of them.  :-(  I’m hoping they come back form the roots.

My first outside garden chore after the general clean-up and starting some flats of Lamiastrum for Keet is going to be putting up a fence to keep them out of the area I’m trying to establish in back- which is most of it.  They’ll have a concrete patio and a service corridor on the far side of the house as well as two large beds on the driveway side of the house that have huge old azaleas.  And by huge I mean 15′ or so.