Cyclamen starting to emerge

This weekend’s gardening activities consisted of flipping through the West Coast Seeds 2011 Gardening Guide.  More than just a mere catalog, it provides all kinds of excellent advice for novice gardeners like “how to plant seeds” (page 42), a color-coded vegetable planting chart that tells you when to plant what (page 7) as well as pages of alluring photos.  They even have an “easy to grow” symbol for people like me! How good is that!

While the catalog is definitely inspiring, with fabulous photos and promises of huge harvests (cauliflowers that are 7-8 inches across, 1-2 pounds (page 20)) I need to take a reality check and remember what happened last year, and stick to the tried-and-true (kale, peas, kale, beans, kale, carrots, kale).  Anyway, speaking of peas and broad beans, they can be planted in Feb, so I need to order seeds soon.

Huckleberry branches