- Author: Patricia Brantley
I'm an impatient gardener. Every year I get suckered in by the promise of sunny days and I plant ahead of schedule and end up with frozen vegetables or young sprouts that get too leggy for their starting pots or containers. So, I'm really trying to be good and follow what should be started now indoors by referring to Dr. Norris' plant chart (which has got to be the best thing ever to give a local gardener!) and review seed catalogs and planning my outdoor garden. Just about anything other than working on taxes or cleaning house!
So here below is the plant chart to get you started and a link to seed catalogs that you can request and some garden planning sites to try out.
Dr. Norris' Planting Chart—A beautiful visual graphic of when to plant!
http://cesolano.ucanr.edu/files/93506.pdf
Seed Catalogs – Actual paper catalogs that can be requested! If you want to save paper many offer digital catalogs as well, but sometimes it's nice to give the eyes a break and curl up with a warm cup of something and browse the “old-fashioned” way!
http://freebies.about.com/od/homegardenfreebies/tp/seed-catalogs.htm
A couple of the links didn't work, but I found that the majority did and I found quite a few new ones! One of my favorites for the past few years has been Kitazawa (based in Oakland) with a wide variety of Asian veggies and plants! You can find them specifically here:
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/index.html
Lastly garden planning/plotting- I always end up changing my mind, but it is fun to mess around and see all the different ways of re-arranging. Who knows, maybe you'll try something different!?! The one I've included here is very simple and free. It just helps you lay out the veggie garden a la the “Square foot Garden” style, but it give you something to click around on for fun. You can change the size of your plot by Clicking on the down arrows under the page heading where it says “Select Garden Size”.
http://vegetableplanner.vegetable-gardening-online.com/
So whatever you do to bide your time until you can get back to the “down and dirty” of the actual garden, I hope you find something here to have fun and enjoy!