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Show 4 - VACATION TIMES - FEBRUARY 1998 at the wrong time, weren’t very appetizing, or you were just plain disappointed with them. This is where noting the exact types you grow each year becomes critical. Planting time GARDEN GRAB BAG. can be so far removed from harvest time that I often forget Okay, okay! So settle down and sit on your hands for a few minutes while we think this through. You’ve just been to your mailbox and found your 15th seed catalog waiting exactly what I planted so I try to write it all down. This year, for instance, I’m hot on the trail of a particular tomato which produced abundant, larger—than—usual, Roma—type fruit for you. The colors are gorgeous, the prices are right, and you just can’t wait to either start filling out theforms or, preferably, calling those 800 numbers with your selections, right? Here’s where the discipline comes in. I’ll be the bad guy and tell you that youjust can’t have them all! That’s right, just like when you were a kid and your mom said you couldn’t have everything you laid eyes on, I’m here to pull whichI got by accident last year from my daughter-in-law. Look at those catalogs with the idea of trying something new each year and you may find a real winner! So we’re sitting there at the table with all these packets or partial packets of leftover seeds, now what? First, discard any that you weren’t happy with or give them to the kids to try for fun. If you’ve stored them under ideal conditions, _ back on your harness and drag you to a screeching halt. Sorry, but that’s just the start! I can hear the moans and groans now, not to mention the various other responses I know some of you are flinging my way, but that’s okay too. forget the next step but for the rest of us this is probably pretty crucial. The seeds, regardless of how old they are, should be checked for viability or, in other words, their ability to sprout. Though many seeds are good from year to I’m your inner conscience reminding you that most of us aren’t independently wealthy but that we can still have great gardens with a little planning, foresight, and patience, . . patience, patience..I guess the first place to start is with the current plantings that you have, what you would like eventually, and how to get there from here. Are we looking-at just flowers or vegetables? Annuals or perennials? Trees or shrubs? Crops that need to be rotated? Sun or shade? Is all the gron prepared or are you going to be expanding various ~ garden areas this next year? Are you going to try succession plantings? Use cold frames ‘or sun rooms for extended harvests? Any container plantings? All these details should be listed and thought through before you even begin to _ consider looking at or ordering from any of the catalogs, regardless of the temptation. It will be a lot easier to trim your list of potential orders once you have a definite plan and, if you can’t get everything this year, you will at least have a goal to eventually reach even if it’s a little bit at a ' time. This is really what we’re doing when we plant a tree. - We don’t see it as that little stick in the ground but as the full, lush green plant which will shade some area and create an island of coolness in our yard some years down the road. . One suggestionl have if we’re discussing vegetables, for instance, is to make a rough drawing of your garden and mark off the locations of what was planted where last year - and maybe even the year before and then list your successes, failures (yes,-we all have some), and thoughts on the amounts that were produced versus what you really wanted. You grew HOW MANY summer squash? This gets easier if you start keeping these garden notes from year to year. Draw another map for this year and rearrange all your crops which need td be rotated so that they are not growing in the same year, you don’t want to find out the-hard way that yours aren’t going to make it after it’s too late to order or plant more. A good way to check is with paper towels marked off into squares of approximately 2”-4” depending on seed size with 10 seeds of each type placed in each square. Cover with a secOnd paper towel and lightly sprinkle some water on it to dampen the whole thing and hold the seeds in place. If you mark your squares and type of seeds with magic markers you can actually read it through the second layer of paper towels once you dampen them and the sprouts are often visible without removing the top towel. The whole thing goes into a plastic freezer-type bag and sits in a warm (not hot) dark place. Check every few days for sprouting and note how many of each type respond. You can use less than 10 seeds per square but that gives you a good sampling and also ' makes it easy to figure your percentage of viability for that seed packet. Rather than being work, this is actually fun, especially at this time of year, to have something germinating and producing little green tendrils of growth. Once you have proved that your lettuce seeds, for example, are only sprouting at the rate of 40% (4 of the 10) you can plan on only getting about half as many plants per packet and order more accordingly. There are other things to consider as we start the yearly garden planning but we don’t have to cover everything today. If you’ve taken the time to read this farI should probably let you go back to those catalogs to dream a little. I’ll admit that I look at some of those wonderful plants thatI know don’t stand a chance in our hot summers and cold winters and wish that there was just one little chance that they’d grow here. —Rusty Salmon, 259-4044 areas. Increase or decrease the size of plantings according to your probable needs for this year and THEN pull out any leftover packets of seeds and evaluate what you have on hand. If you planted 3 packets of beans which all came up but were sadly eaten by bugs then (1) you planted a type which grows well here, (2) maybe there’s a species that’s more bug resistant or a companion planting which will work for your bug problem, and (3) obviously the one packet you still have is not going to be enough for this year. Unless, of course, you’ve now decided that this is the 4th year that the bugs won and you really don’t like beans anyway! Another aspect to consider is the actual species. Maybe you had melons but they were the wrong size, all ripened oGroundwater Locating 9 Well Development HC 64 Box 2003 Castle Valley, Utah 84532 Studies & Reports. Water Treatment Systems 0 Anton Layne Kabonic 801-259-8042 14- — |