I've been growing ornamentals (flowers and shrubs) for about 35 years, but last year was the first time I tried to grow vegetables. I'm surprised at how hard it's been for me to get up to speed on the veggies.For one thing, I've never had much luck planting flowers from seed but it's best to plant a lot of the vegetables from seed. (I don't want to spend more on the plants than I'd spend in the produce section.) Then you have to keep straight things like cool season crops, second crops, length of time until harvest, which ones grow well together, and which ones hurt each other!

I'd eventually like to start saving seeds from one year to the next, so I've been trying to keep that in mind, too. Generally, that means buying old-fashioned varieties and avoiding hybrids. I have some seeds left over from last year, and this week I started with online mail order seed companies to fill out my garden for this year. Here's what I found:

• Heirloom Seeds—It looked great until I started to place an order. That's when I learned they are 45 business days behind on filling orders. That won't work for me because I'm ready to plant now.
• Everlasting Seeds—That looks like a similar company, but they seem to sell seeds in bundles ("garden in a can") only. Sorry, we aren't big vegetable eaters to begin with, and I insist on being able to pick and choose.
• Seeds of Change—I didn't like the idea of a seed company owned by a huge candy company, but I wanted to plant grains or food seeds and that was the only company selling them. However, when I tried to order some quinoa it was out of stock. On to the next.
• Seedsavers—I tried this site because of the comment in my previous entry. I started to place an order there and was even planning to buy a membership. Then the cheapskate took over. I recognized the names of some of the seeds I bought locally last year and realized I didn't have to order them.
  

So tonight I went to Walmart and bought the rest of the seeds I want for this year (except celery—what's the deal with that?). Speaking of being a cheapskate, they are selling packets of American Seed seeds for 20 cents each (packaged for 2009—I checked). I don't think there are many seeds in each packet, but I only want one zucchini plant! I also found Early Golden Bantam corn in that section, which is exactly what I was looking for. Most of the other corn seeds seem to be hybrids.

I rounded out my selections with some Burpee seeds, and I couldn't resist adding a few flowers while I was there.

After I got home I dragged out all the seeds I've bought or saved in past years, put on a shelf in the garage, and forgotten about. While I'm planting this year's seeds, I'm planning to plant the old ones too. I can't bear to throw them out, and there's no sense saving them any longer. We'll have a science experiment! There are a bunch of basil and wildflower seeds from the mid 1990s and a box of green bean seeds from 1989. I'll let you know how it turns out. I've learned that you need to keep seeds from drying out when you store them, and these seeds were not protected at all, so I'm not expecting much.

Last year I didn't get anything planted until the end of May and I hardly had anything to harvest.. This year I hope to have better luck by planting my new seeds and the ones left over last year (which I did save in a tin) in the house in the next few days. If even my new ones do poorly, we'll have to wonder whether it was because I bought the cheap ones instead of the ones from Seedsavers. But, like all garden catalog readers and seed planters, I'm an optimist as the season begins.