February, The Hardest Month

Growing up in West Virginia my Mom always said that February was the hardest month. It's far enough into winter to make it seem like warm weather will never get here, which makes spring seem far too distant. February in West Virginia is mostly gray with a chance of snow.

Since moving to The South, that has gotten some better. It's not as cold as West Virginia here and there is little or no snow, but I still agree with my Mom about February. However, recently I have found a golden lining to February: seed and chick orders.

I love looking through all the seed catalogs. So many choices, so many possibilities. Below are a few of my favorite catalogs.

I have sentimental feelings for R.H. Shumway's. My dad use to order seeds from them, so every spring the catalog was in our house. They have a great selection of seeds. My personal favorite is the heirloom tomato variety "Hillbilly", it's an old variety from West Virginia. They get big (1 to 2 lbs.), have a great taste and just have that homegrown look about them. I have a flat of them started in my mini-greenhouse.

The Rare Seeds catalog from Baker Creek, is just a pure pleasure to look at, plus their seeds are non GMO. They have a little bit of everything in there with varieties that you may not be able to find elsewhere. I was able to find and order Yarrow and Marshmallow from them. If you're a butterfly lover they have hard to find Milkweed seeds.

My personal favorite is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  I love this catalog! This is the go to catalog if you live along the southern coast and want to plant a garden. It's chock full of information from how to grow each seed, to harvesting, to diseases, to medicinal uses. It's absolutely amazing, and I will keep it with my reference books. I placed a huge order this morning for my medicinal herbs. Also, for some really neat Lemon Cucumbers which I'm going to try to pickle.

This past fall, my youngest daughter and I were shopping in Tuesday Mornings and found 2 mini- greenhouses on sale for $5.00 each. I bought both of them and stored them back in our junk, I mean storage room. Last week my wonderful daughter put one of them together and it's not bad. I just love deals.

Speaking of deals, right now our Tractor Supply store has a really good deal on 56 lb. bags of garden soil. They are $6.99 each and so far we have accumulated 5 bags. We will use it to fill the pots we're going to plant our herbs in. You can never have too much garden soil, can you?

So, February, I have decided that there just may be hope for you yet. And if not, hey you're only 28 days long.

Next blog we get to talk about CHICKS!