It Starts With Seeds

 The seed displays have been up at Farm and Fleet stores for a few weeks now. Probably at Fleet Farm stores too. Somehow it’s wrong to have Christmas merchandise up in September, but gardening stuff showing up in January is just fine!

Seeing the seed display is both funny, because of the snow and ice outside, and nice, because it confirms the optimism that spring will eventually come.

By now I have my standby seed choices. In the green bean world, I like either the Slenderette or Tenderette variety. I can never remember, so I get a pack of each. I always buy things to start indoors, like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. The truth is that my luck as a seed starter hasn’t been very good, although last year I grew some very impressive umbrella-shaped mushrooms.

In the past I’ve made the mistake of buying seeds for some really beautiful flowers without reading that, in some cases, they “will blossom in 320 days.” Since we live in Wisconsin and not Florida, 320 days to blossom is another way to say, “a complete waste of time and money.”

When buying sweet corn seeds I usually get a few types, including an “early” variety. It seems, though, that despite the best plans, they both ripen at about the same time, so this year I got a bigger pack of the regular stuff. We used to get one called either “Early King” or “Ear Liking,” depending on how you read “Earliking.”

The real trick, this time of year, is to remember where you put the seeds. January and May are pretty far apart and what seems like a great place to put the seeds might turn out to be an unanswerable puzzle when the time comes that we need them. The only way to find those seeds is to buy them again. Immediately they’ll show up.

So, anyway, the seeds are there. Hope springs eternal!