Seed Catalogs

With all the freezing cold outside (and trust me; it is freezing cold outside) the thing that helps save my sanity is the flood of seed catalogs I get every winter. (Odd considering I usually hate junk mail.)

The good old fashioned seed catalogs 1) Remind me what growing things look like, as opposed to all the white frozen stuff around me. 2) Causes me to think about experimenting with varieties of vegetables I haven't tried before. 3) Offer help with problems I have growing things.

Case in point: a good many of my neighbors seem to be able to grow strawberries and blueberries. I have spent a shameful amount of money trying to do likewise to no avail. I have yet to harvest a single berry; just a lot of dead plants. (hangs head in shame)

We received a nice big seed catalog from the Jung Seed Company (No, I am not affiliated with them in any way!) and my husband got to it first. He suddenly says, "Hey, I think I found your problem." (This could cover so many things!) I raised an eyebrow. "What?" He smiled. "Your dead blueberries," he elaborated, and handed me the catalog. 

Now, aside from the numerous seeds and plants offered in seed catalogs, they also offer tidbits about why one might be having a particular problem and of course the products they sell to remedy the situation. We had our farm soil tested last year and they all had pretty much the same result: our soil is neutral, as in, not acidic at all, especially around where I plant our food. Blueberries need acidic soil to grow. Well, I'll be. I have some work to do this spring and I will be getting the suggested products either from the catalog or locally if I can find it. Quite frankly, plants seldom survive the journey from any company to our farm anyway (like sweet potatoes-ahhh!), but the seeds and other products do well and if not available locally, I will go to the catalogs.

                                                   

                                    

            Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

             Stock Photo - image ID: 10090261

What I have started is my own gardening book of sorts and you can too. Peruse the catalogs for the types of produce, flowers, bushes, trees, etcetera, you prefer and see if they have growing tips and troubleshooting tidbits. Cut them out of the catalog and put them in a binder by category. That way you can find them easily when you run into something with your plants. This is fairly inexpensive –you still will need a binder and something on which to collect the articles. Print off articles you may find online or cut out agricultural articles in magazines and trade newspapers (I have done this for animal health) and add them to your binder. You can also obtain leaflets from your state's university extension service. It is way less expensive than buying an entire book, or books, just for one or two problems and you have what you need at your fingertips. 

Now, if someone could just help me with those strawberries! 

Just Like Zikan's

There is no getting around it; when you live out in the country, as I do, when you go shopping, you get enough to last a while. There is a store in a spot in the road town nearby however, and though it's not a big box store that can get the super low prices, you can still completely survive using it.

The other night my husband was looking for a can of olives. I have a habit of buying extra items when I go grocery shopping, especially baking ingredients since he also has a huge sweet tooth. This led to his using the at-a-glance method when he looks for anything in the cabinets because he can just declare it not there and I'll find it, which I did. I reached in behind all the baking supplies and pulled out the can. "Just like Zikan's!" I said. He laughed.

What is Zikan's? Think of the general store in all the old westerns you ever saw. It is jokingly (and lovingly) referred to as the Catawba Mall. They sell everything you could possibly need. In one side is clothing, chore boots, baby clothes and items, cloth, sewing notions, cleaning supplies, groceries, even a small old fashioned meat counter. The other side and the basement has everything else: fan belts, small appliances such as radios, coffee makers, waffle irons and the like, dishes, glassware, cutlery, utinsels, pots and pans, paint, plumbing and electrical supplies, sporting goods, bicycles, stove pipe, mops, brooms, buckets, nuts, bolts, nails, tools, garden supplies, fans, small farm supplies like fence wire and insulators, chicken feeders and waterers, even hunting and fishing licenses and gear. There is not much this place doesn't carry and has for more years than I've been here. Considering how much they have, the building is not that large, so they stock things in front of and on top of other items. All you have to do is ask and they can reach, unseeing, into a pile and pull it out. Very few times I've gone in there and they were out of something or didn't carry it at all. Thus the joke, "See, just like Zikan's!"

I'll tell you what; you can shop the Wall-Marts of the world all you want, but if you really want that hard to find, unique item, you need a store like Zikan's.