Nothing like seed shopping following a hectic holiday week! I had many catalogs arrive this week and I am making a pile to savor when I can get an afternoon in sitting by the woodstove with a glass of vino!

A TOTal total of 4 inches?? Wow. Just wow. I can even imagine how challanging that might be. Chosing the right seeds, looking always I'm sure for natives or at leaset things you have seen thriving in yards with similar conditions to yours. I think it would be an interesting but a lot of hard work too.Yes?

Speaking of seed ordering, aren't there some sites (at least one I remember being mentioned) that have some kind of Deals over New years? Free shipping maybe? Or am I imagining that someone said this? (wishful thinking???)

Nancy

I got the names of the seed places I used from a post that is on the second page now. I just looked at it again and Hazzards is the name of the place that ships for free on New years or maybe it was New Years Eve - it's late and my brain is muddled. 4 inches is extreme drought in my area - normal precip is around 10 or 12 inches - still not much. I use alot of echinacea, catmint, grasses and salvia of assorted varieties and LOTS and LOTS of mulch. My soil (and I use that term loosely) is very hard packed - I used a small pick axe to dig the holes for my plants - so I pull away the mulch and add compost or ground up leaves as often as I can. In the areas where I have been doing that for 6 years, the soil is amazingly better than where I just started - really holds the moisture better and has thriving populations of earthworms. One of the reasons I really like winter sowing - it produces really tough plants and it saves money that I can use to purchase mulch and compost. I produce some compost but not enough. I use the large size of bark mulch because the high winds we experience won't blow it away.

The past two years Hazzard's offered free shipping on New Years Eve. The free shipping shows up when you check out so I can't vouch for whether they're doing it again this year. As far as I'm aware they're the only ones who do that altho' Santa Rosa Gardens has an offer of 35% off your order if it's placed by 12/31. Discount code is ebird2012. My orders for both are ready to go! Not ordering a lot since I don't need/want much after two successful winter sowing seasons. I also ordered LOTS during SRG's half-off sale back in May/June and again in September. Who can pass up hellebores priced at $2.99?

I ordered a bunch of plants from the SRG sale too - then because of a bum knee ran out of time to plant them and just stuck all of them in one big hole until spring. I'll be ordering again from them in the fall if they have another sale - was amazed at the size of their plants.

No free shipping with Hazzard's this time. I was bummed but the S&H is $5.95 which isn't too, too outrageous. I'm splitting the Panorama Red monarda/bee balm seeds with a neighbor so that'll offset the S&H to some extent. Still, looking forward to WS the seeds when they get here.

Aklinda,

I'm kind of curious what you ordered or what has done well for you. I'm doing all drought hardy seeds too. I even ordered some 4 Wing Saltbush seeds to plant on the property line from Plants of the Southwest in Santa Fe. I've sowed some other NM native perennials and shrubs and some Texas plants. I got some cold hardy seeds from a guy in Arizona that should thrive on heat and little water.

We are still in a serious drought and years back I just got sick of watering all the time and took everything out and went native and drought hardy. We had over 100 degrees for 60 days in a row last summer.

One that does real well for me is Desert Marigold. Each plant has hundreds of blooms spring, summer into late fall. The Flameflowers are good too. The flameflowers I thinned out kept blooming out of the ground in a bucket for a month of so (thats drought hardy!) and both of these naturalize well.

Standing Cypress is one I also love and have real good results with. Gorgeous tall spikes of screaming red. I have a couple of kinds of primrose that do very well but want to try the White-tufted Evening Primrose.

I'm always interested in native NM plants or suggestions of drought hardy plants. Some are kind of hard to find and others are available. I have Apache Plume, Winterfat and Chamisa I grew from seed. This year I sowed a lot of Beargrass and more native grasses.

One thats not native that will stand up to torture and very little rain is Russian Sage.

Some other new ones I am trying this year are:
Mentzelia decapetala
Blackfoot Daisy
Feather Dalea
Buckwheatbrush
Showy paloxifolia
Sand Penstemon
Ratibida columnifera
Caeslpinia gilliesii
Broom Dalea
Desert Holly