finally! my 2012 seed order (+ an afterthought)

Since I put this list together 7 years ago but I have now started to favour Kings Seeds (Suffolk Herbs) for my vegetables. I also get many more seeds from clubs and organisations rather than merchants.

Decorative gardens can benefit from growing seedheads for their own sake. Flowers With Seedheads

With nearly 2-foot-wide, light green leaves on hairy stems that can approach 4 feet here, Astilboides tabularis is no shy thing, though it’s not a spreading thug at all. The stems attach in the middle of the leaf, so the foliage is held aloft like a small, round pedestal table—or some people say an umbrella.But its name is so descriptive, if you think about it: the tabularis part (meaning flat-topped, like a table), and even the genus name, Astilboides, since its flowers look like a giant creamy astilbe plume of sorts. Its “common” name (though I’ve never heard anybody say it) is shieldleaf. Make mine Astilboides.I brought my first clump home from a plant sale at the nearby Cary Arboretum, as it was then called, now the Cary Institute of Ec

Like the journalist I was trained to be, I’m always editing the garden, and good thing, since by August in a dry year like this one has been, it needs another round. Gaps in the perennial beds (preferable with a little fresh mulch applied) will look better than a hosta that’s had it, or an anemic-looking bleeding heart.Focal points: weeds and water. Every weed pulled now is a hundred (a million?) you don’t have to deal with later. Don’t let them go to seed. Make a pass through each bed each week, since weeds are not just unsightly but steal moisture, nutrients and light from desired plants. Too many to handle in a particular area? Smother them with cardboard and mulch, like this.If your garden is dry, don’t waste water on lawns, which will bounce back from brown when cooler, moister days return—or on washing down paths and patios. Sweep instead! Target water offerings to the most precious subjects, particularly recently planted things and the vegetable garden.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, total $15 including shipping‘Blue Lake Bush’ bean ‘Blue Hubbard’ winter squash ‘North Georgie Candy Roaster’ winter squash ‘Jumbo Pink Banana’ winter squash ‘Sweet Dumpling’ winter squash Another confession: After I posted the previous details of the order, I suddenly felt embarrassed. And then I did the math.As I mentioned in the earlier post’s comments, I haven’t bought any tomato sauce or canned tomatoes in years, for instance. Last time I looked, the organic ones are not cheap, and I use red sauce or something made with it once a week or more. If I credit myself $2 for each container of frozen or jarred meals I created from my 2009 garden produce–just $2, e

Truth be told, I cannot even usually recall its name at those moments, an embarrassing thing when you are hosting garden tours. Nor did I know that it had a “common” name, let along two (the other being pink cow parsnip, apparently).I’d never gotten up close and personal enough with this lovely plant all these years to notice if it’s really apple-scented the way the references all say it is. (I just went out and took a whiff, and I say no. Smells to this nose like parsley, or something else green; no apples here.)What this little umbellifer of about 2 feet tall in bloom does have is good ferny foliage (not unlike its namesake chervil

LESPEDEZA THUNBERGII: A 6-by-6 fountain of late-summer into fall purple glory. Easy, too.HAKONECHLOA ‘ALL GOLD’: The Japanese forest grass turns my shady garden areas golden tones from May into winter.HELLEBORE HYBRIDS: Dry shade? No problem. Forgiving, beautiful, extra-early blooming perennials with evergreen foliage to boot.SEDUM ‘MATRONA’: Maybe my favorite of the taller sedums, all blue-green and pinkish in that sedum-y way.GERANIUM PHAEUM ‘SAMOBOR’: Perennial geraniums are a must; this one’s perhaps the mustest, showy and cooperative.LATHYRUS VERNUS: A little perennial pea of early spring (above) that’s delicate and durable; one of my sprin

Lathyrus vernus plays well with others, and doesn’t ask for any attention. It even tolerates rather dry spots in the woodland garden, hallelujah, though I grow it in sunnier areas, too. Sold?In my garden, Lathyrus vernus coincides with the mid-season to late Narcissus, and is in full color with the acid-yellow early euphorbias, hellebores and pulmonarias, among other

Out of the leaf litter they ascend.When I purchased this native of woodsy streambanks in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon for my New York garden, it was still called Peltiphyllum peltatum. I have a thing for big-leaved plants (likeAstilboides, its cousinRodgersia, and even thuggishPetasites). I had to tryDarmera, whose leaves can reach 18 in

I KNOW, I KNOW: Why can’t it just last; why does it all have to start to flop and fade and fall apart? The spring garden, that is. June is the month when spring turns to summer—often well before the official moment (June 20 at 7:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time in 2012). Remember those gorgeous lilacs, rhododendron, flowering bulbs? Beautiful memories, yes, but also big brown messes everywhere. Uh-oh, get ready for another cleanup! Shall we tackle it together, one thing at a time (in print, and in podcast version)?

WAIT—DON’T GET SEDUCED, or at least not by seeds, not quite yet. Try to resist that inevitable catalog binge at least until you inventory what’s left over, and still viable, from last year’s stash.

I AM A PROPONENT OF GROWING YOUR OWN; you just have to check my freezer and pantry the last couple of decades to see that. But a vegetable garden is not without its costs or its commitments—cash and elbow grease both required, and then some. Vegetable harvests, like money, don’t grow on trees.