Looking through the seed catalogues

As the wind whips around the corner of the house and sifts the snow across the frozen ground, I snuggle into my blanket and...yeah, plan next year's garden already. We started some lettuce and tomato seeds indoors for our aquaponics tub and now the bug has hit me and all I can think of is fat red beets and the crunch of garden peas.

Here's a list of what I think I'll be planting next year:

• Desi summer squash
• Nimba zucchini or possibly Black Beauty zucchini
• Aunt Molly's ground cherries
• It's time to plant more Martha Washington asparagus -- my current bed is starting to get old
• Bull's blood beets
• Waltham broccoli
• Koda cabbage (red)
• Danvers half-long carrots
• miniature white cucumbers (once you have these you never want to go back to boring English cukes again)
• Diamond eggplant
• Miner's lettuce -- I had no luck with this in the past but want to try it indoors this time
• Dwarf Siberian kale
• Collective Farm Woman melon (my favourite)
• Alaska garden peas
• Little Marvel garden peas
• Swedish red peas
• green onions
• Spaghetti squash
• About eight kinds of dry cooking beans (Adzuki, Borlotto Lingua Di Fuoco, Ireland Creek Annies, Beka Browns, First Nations, Black Turtle beans, white navy beans or coco bianco, and Orcas)
• Mascotte green beans
• Various kinds of lettuce and spinach, indoors and out

And of course I have the radishes, onions, sedum, purslane, oregano, peppermint, and cherry tomatoes that volunteer in the garden each year without having to be planted. And the rhubarb, blueberries, lavender, and edible lilies, which are permanent plants.

I don't think I'll plant onions, as we use them by the ten-pound sackful and may as well buy them, because I can't grow that many. I tend not to grow corn, either, because it uses a lot of space and nutrients for a small yield. And we buy plum tomatoes by the bushel from a local farmer, so I'll only grow the few beefsteak ones aquaponically for salads and snacking. I had no luck with cauliflower in the past and won't be trying that again. And I still have wheat and oats left from the first time I grew them.

Now I'm hungry...