January Monthly Feature

What Can I Do In January?

By Colleen McKenna

It’s cold and everything seems desolate. As a gardener, what can you do? Plan your garden for next year. It’s the perfect time. How will you plan? The fun way to plan is by using catalogs, either paper or online (preferably). Then, you can spend your time pouring over and enjoying all the latest and tried and true seeds for next year. It is great way to while away the cold winter days fantasizing and planning next year’s garden. Just do a search for the seeds you want with your favorite search engine and see what you come up with.

Some of my favorite seed sites are:

Seed Centre (Edmonton):             
- specializes in vegetable, herb, and flower seeds for home gardeners and in bulk for market gardens.
http://www.seedcentre.com/index8x6.htm

Bedrock Seed Bank (Fort Saskatchewan): 
- (local company) that specializes in native and hardy seeds and plants for our local area that require minimal maintenance and have low water needs
http://www.bedrockseedbank.com/

Stokes Seeds (Thorold, ON):           
- specializes in flower, vegetable, herb and perennial seeds and garden accessories
http://www.stokeseeds.com/cgi-bin/StokesSeeds.storefront

Veseys (York, PEI):                     
- specializes in vegetable, herb, flower seeds and plants, and annuals, bulbs, fruit, berries, tools, supplies, Mantis Tiller products, and golf and turf equipment
http://www.veseys.com/ca/en/

Devonian Botanic Garden (Devon):
- specializes in open pollinated seeds that include alpine plants, annuals, bulbs, herbaceous perennials, herbs, native plants, vegetables and woody plants
http://www.devonian.ualberta.ca/seedlist.html

The Cottage Gardener (Newtonville, ON):
- specializes in heirloom seeds of perennials, annuals, herbs and vegetables
http://www.cottagegardener.com/

Seeds of Diversity:
- it is a charitable organization dedicated to conserving and promoting non-hybrid Canadian plants. You can join and obtain seed samples in exchange for return postage. Also, on this link is a list of seed companies and nurseries that sell heirloom and rare or endangered varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs.
http://www.seeds.ca/rl/rl.php