We've had the bags of root crops (asparagus, shallots, seed potatoes, garlic, dry onions sets) and flower tubers, corms, bulbs, (canna, iris, gladiolus, lily) etc. since the week after Christmas. I haven't seen any seed displays yet, but to be fair, the only stores I've been in this week are Sam's Club and Wal-Mart, and I only went into the grocery part of Wal-Mart, so that store could have had seed displays at the garden center area but I never went near it.

I have my own seed display here in front of me on the table as I pick out varieties from my seed storage tote for this year's seed-starting. I really need to just shop from my own seed supply this year because I don't need any more. However, not needing any more will not necessarily stop me from wanting more.

I am excited about the warm-up and sunshine, and it can't get here too soon for me.

I saw the displays of onions and other stuff at walmart but haven't seen the seed displays. I have so many catalogs and web favorites to encourage me.
I saw a picture that indicated there is a name for this uh seed need. Its called S.A.D.
Seed Acquisition Disorder.
I have an order waiting to see if I still need them in a week.
I am ready for some sunshine too!
kim

Kim, lol. Love the new name for S.A.D. All this time I thought it stood for Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think that Seed Acquisition Disorder might be the remedy for Seasonal Affective Disorder because the gray, gloomy, cloudy weather doesn't bother me so much when I'm obsessed by all the seed offerings in the ever-growing stack of seed catalogs and on all the garden company websites. I think we have one more cloudy day here today before we are going to get the warm-up and the sunshine. I am ready to see the sun again. It's been hidden behind clouds so long that I hope I recognize it when it comes out of hiding.

Two more seed catalogs arrived yesterday so at least I have something new to drool over, and I'd been waiting for both of them so probably will order the seeds I need specifically from them today. It won't be many packets of seeds from either one---just a couple of things I need/want.

No matter how many seeds I have in my seed box awaiting the right planting time and weather, I still have to stop and look at every seed display in every store we go into in the spring--even after I've already looked at that exact display 15 times. It isn't even that I expect to find anything since I already will have everything I want and need---I always tell Tim "I just want to see what they have" as he heads off elsewhere in the store to get whatever is on the shopping list, knowing I'll eventually tear myself away from the seed rack and catch up with him. It is the same thing when the fruit trees begin arriving. I don't have that much open space to plant more fruit trees since our property is heavily wooded, but I have to look at those fruit trees every time.

Dawn

I have S.A.D B.A.D., both kinds. LOL. A couple of days before Christmas we were in Walmart (needed an unexpected gift for a child, what a nightmare!). DH was checking out (standing in line), and I headed to the car to sit down. We were at the garden end of the store and as I was leaving through their "greenhouse" area, GREEN caught my eye. A small display of kind of sad looking house plants. I stood there basking in the "aura" of growing plants, in the dark and quiet, after the crazy crush inside. Made it all better.

I have to look at seed racks, too. I always see something I missed last time. And I finally got some catalogs so the paring down of the list must begin again, since the new catalog had so many things I want...

I guess since I am so new to gardening and so new to eating a huge variety of veggies I always find something I don't have yet. Well I am trying to control myself and I made a list of things I have room for but I know when those seed racks go up and I have to take my friend to the garden center there will be extra seeds in the basket.
I think part of the SAD is denial too.
I am trying really hard to stay on budget too this year but uh seeds are food right?
The other day at walmart my friend lost me and when we caught up I shrugged and said I was in the garden center, of course. I was hoping they would unload something good while I was there.
kim

I have not had time to look at anything. Mom is in a nursing home, but I hope to bring her home with me next week. She is 90 years old and will need full time care, so my gardening may be cut out this year. We will have to wait and see if she is strong enough to stay here.

I haven't been in Walmart since before Christmas and I'm pretty happy about it. I want to see what they have in the garden center but not badly enough to go. I haven't had time to look at any seed catalogs either, though. It's the middle of January and I already feel like I'm behind. I need to hurry up and order because it's getting close to time to plant them.

Leslie

Larry, I sympathize, I hope things work out for you. Don't forget to take care of yourself.

The Gainesville, TX, Wal-Mart across the river from us has the boxes of onion plants outdoors in the Garden Center. It isn't really onion-planting time here yet, though I do have some friends who tend to buy them and plant them as soon as they see them in stores and then, most years, they get to buy more and plant them after the first batch of plants freeze a few weeks later. They also have the seed displays in the store now, as well as the whole array of seed-starting supplies.

Larry, I hope all goes well for y'all and that your mom gets to stay with you. Be sure to carve out a little gardening time for yourself if you can. You spend so much time taking care of your loved ones, but you've got to take care of yourself too. For me, gardening is as important to my mental health as eating and sleeping is to my physical health. I cannot imagine not having a garden---it is my stress relief (as well as being, ironically, my biggest source of stress as well).

We're all going to have spring fever so bad after the next few bright and beautiful, warm, sunny days. I'm sure the cold, gloomy winter weather will return just about the time we're all convinced we're going to have an early spring.

We had sunshine all day long here today, and warmed up nicely, hitting around 55 degrees. Tomorrow will be even nicer.

Dawn

I am going to Lubbock this weekend and cant wait to get near a seed display. I may get my list out and just see what I might need!
kim

I placed a Dixondale order for TOO many onion plants, then a Pinetree order. When I received Pinetree, I sat down and put the packs into their respective storage bags, so I could start through the stash and see what I wanted to plant this year. I talked myself out of a few more things that would have to be ordered from other sources. I was feeling pretty good about myself......and then Dawn posted that link to Hazzards....and now I know I will have to place another order. Dawn, you should get a commission?

Carol, Oh no, no commission. I just get the joy of enabling gardeners to find another source for seeds, 'cause you know that none of us has enough seeds yet. Blame this one on Pam (from Virginia). She mentioned Hazzard's a few years ago and that is how I first learned about them. The website is huge and it drove me crazy at first, but I learned to use the search function to narrow things down so that I wasn't trying to scroll through thousands of seed listings.

Dawn

Well, you know I had to order Comfrey......and a few other things. LOL

I like the huge packages, the selection, and the fact that shipping cost was a flat $5.95.

And it is only about a month to starting transplants.

I will have to look that up. More joy for Dawn for enabling yet another seed addictlover.
Seriously I am looking for someone that sells large quantity seeds. I found Sample Seed Shop for the small I want to try something new and thrilled with the selection and price.
Bring on the seeds!!!
kim

Yeah, Sample Seed Shop got me, too, and Pinetree and Fedco and Johnny's and Bountiful Gardens and a couple of other places with specialty items I can't get otherwise! My Atwoods had seed starting mix on sale and the 4 shelf greenhouses for $20, but no seeds. What's up with that. Couldn't bring myself to fight traffic at Walmart. Maybe General dollar will have some...not that I need them! Last night I went through about 75 flower seeds I got in a big swap and I have herb seeds coming soon. Holy cow, where will I put them?

I am going to have to actually measure my planting area and figure from there. in my head there is plenty of room but actual ground....
I know it is approx. 75x125 but my son hasn't measured. I think it would help if I know exactly. The other area I can plant is 1/3 acre but really don't want to have to irrigate that area until I have enough mulch to go around.
The hazard seed is just what I have been looking for. I need some bulk ground cover seeds, just not sure what to use yet.
kim

I do like Hazzard's for things I want in large quantity.

I ordered seeds sporadically throughout the day and think I'm almost done. Almost. Because I'm never really totally and completely done with the acquisition of seeds.

I've actually exercised a pretty decent amount of self-control so far this gardening year and only have ordered seeds from a mere handful of suppliers: Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seed Savers Exchange, Victory Seeds, Select Seeds Antique Flowers (one of my faves for heirloom flowers that are hard to find any more), Territorial Seed (I had to have Butterpie squash and you know that I never order just one packet of seed from anyone, so I had to get a few more things to make it worth paying the shipping), and Dixondale Farms (of course, and I cut back to only 5 bundles of onion plants). There's still a couple of things I want from Kitasawa Seeds (because I like their hybrid avocado-type summer squash since it is a C. moschata) and also there's a mere handful of things I must have from Baker Creek. There's a lot more that I want, but I know I won't have room for more. Oh, and some wildflower seeds from Wildseed Farms, and that's absolutely the last thing I need to order. I'm going to try to ignore the new catalogs that just arrived this week. They're too late---I'm done. I've ordered enough (which means too much) and don't need more.

I can look at seeds on a seed rack in a store and then walk away because, honestly, I've probably got all I need of anything that is common enough to be on a seed rack in a retail store here in my part of the state. We don't have many nurseries down here, so it generally is just whatever is in the box box stores, or occasionally I'll see something a little unusual in a feed store. I only really get in trouble when I find really unusual things that you don't see often, if ever, in stores. Those are the ones that tempt me, and that's what makes catalog/online shopping so tempting. What if you don't try that rare purple carrot this year....and cannot find the seed next year? That's how my brain works......

I usually start seeds on Super Bowl Sunday, so need to calm down and not get in a big rush. We have some lovely days ahead where I can work outside all day, leaving no time for me to start seeds too early. When the next big cold wave hits us late next week, that's the danger zone when it is tempting to open up the seed packets and start some seeds because it is too cold and yucky outside.

Speaking of outside, November was mostly very cold at my end of the state, and December was really warm. It was so warm my rose bushes are leafing out....and the fruit trees are getting too eager to do the same thing, even though we had a night last week.

Kim, Before the deer became as big of a problem as they are now, I would just drag out the rototiller and till up more soil to accommodate more seeds. When we fenced in the front garden with 8' tall fencing a few years ago, I "gave back" almost half of the large front garden to Mother Nature. We just couldn't fence it all or, rather, we could have but we weren't willing to because the west end was becoming increasingly shady so it didn't make sense to fence it in for veggies. I miss the pre-deer-herd days when I could just rototill more land to plant whatever I wanted, which gave me a lot of leeway when I bought too many seeds. Since then, we've added three more smaller fenced garden plots, but I think it still isn't as much as I gave up when I shrunk down the front garden a bit for the taller fencing.

I was looking today at trees encroaching on the garden from the west and the north and was thinking we need to get busy cutting down some trees on the edge of the woods before I lose more of the garden to tree roots and shade. My garden is not relentlessly creeping ever closer to the woodland---it is the woodland attempting to take back the land we converted to garden space. I need every bit of that garden space for all the seeds I buy.

Dawn

Animals are my biggest concern for the outer garden areas. Mostly wild hogs. We are going to fence it all in eventually to keep stray cows, hogs, deer out but right now we just cage the smaller individually planted areas like trees. Last year something chewed my pecan to the ground but amazingly it came back. It has a nice big cage now :)
kim

Wild hogs are a gardener's nightmare. We have them come onto our property, but not often, and when they do come onto our land, they usually are back near the back property line (nearest the river). One drought year they came through the creek beds and found the only creek that still had some water in a deep hole and they hung out there for several weeks, but never traveled another 100 yards or so to come up near the house and destroy the lawn and garden. (Hooray for that.) Some years I hear them more than I see them, and that's okay---I don't want to see them.

At our place, it is the deer that are really hard on the young fruit trees. I worried rabbits would nibble their bark in winter, but they don't. Of course, they might be because I feed the rabbits. Happy rabbits will come to an established feeding station and ignore my plants, and I'm okay with that.

I was at the Wal-Mart in Gainesville today, and spring surely has arrived there even though it still is late winter. All the gardening supplies are in the store now, including cool-season transplants like kale, broccoli, etc. I had to look at the seeds again, just because they were there, and there were a lot more bagged root, corm, and tuber type products than last time---like about 4 times as many. It was 70 or 71 degrees when I was there and it felt like a lovely April afternoon. Alas, in a couple of days rain and snow are in the forecast.

And, just for giggles, I'll pass this info on: I heard a gentleman inside the store ask someone if there were any tomato plants out in the garden center yet. Of course the answer was no and I was shaking my head that someone was asking about tomato plants in January. Yet, by the same token, if they'd had tomato plants, I would have bought some....just because they were there in the store. I might think that I wouldn't buy them, but deep in my heart, I know that I would. I haven't even started my own tomato seeds yet, and won't for a couple more weeks, but I sure would have bought a couple of plants and potted them up into larger containers in the greenhouse.

It became clear to me this past week that seed-starting and planting season are just around the corner. My first clue? Winter fire season is beginning early and with a vengeance, and I always find myself struggling to find time to get the season-starting and winter/early spring transplanting done on time when the fire season overlaps the planting season. I'm hoping for a lot of rain later this week that will put a bit of a dent in the fire season, but we aren't likely to get enough rain down here to make much difference.

Dawn