Sustainable Saturday - The Gardening Hot Stove League

It is a cold, sunny winter day in New York State.  Time for some garden hot stove leaguing.

Back when I grew up, baseball fans described their off-season fantasies as the "Hot Stove League".

Most of us haven't heated with wood or coal in years (the "Hot Stove") but winter gives us, in colder climates, the pleasure of rerunning our last garden in our mind, analyzing its successes and its failures.  So, why not a Gardening Hot Stove League.

Dream of the garden to come.  The garden that will be perfect.  Everything we plant will come up.  Nothing will be eaten by insects, rabbits, groundhogs, or deer.  The soil will be fertile, the pests nonexistant, and the yields bumper.

Yeah, right.

But, since hope is a strong emotion, we sit with the seed catalogs, old and new.

One of the new catalogs I ordered was from a company in Kansas which imports seeds from Italy.

The company is called Seeds from Italy. They are a seed catalog company offering vegetable seeds, herb seeds, and flower seeds imported from Italy from the seed company Franchi Sementi.  Of course, I had never heard of Franchi Sementi, but apparently they are Italy's largest family owned seed company.  More impressive, they have signed the Safe Seed Pledge. 

They pledge not to sell seed from genetically modified plants.

The Hot Stove League is not only a time to dream about spring and our next garden.  It is a time to put beliefs into practice.  

Will you join me in the Gardening Hot Stove League? (If you are in a warmer or summer clime, feel free to join in, too.)

Have you found any new seed or plant catalogs this year that fascinate you?