Happy new gardening year!

American tonda squash nabbed from www.rareseeds.com

Hello to you all from the fluey indoors in Pallasgreen. Finally both Seamus and I have succumbed to the bug that has been doing the rounds over Christmas (Ginger seems to have escaped). I woke on Thursday morning to a hung-over type head, aching body and tired limbs (NO DRINKING done before you ask).Today it has moved on to partial deafness and weird taste in my throat accompanied by green phlegm-lovely.

You get the picture-Zombie like state all day.Nevertheless it hasn't stopped me eating or sleeping for Ireland.I did manage a trip around the garden yesterday,  spotting the earliest of the spring bulbs cheerfully sending up fresh green shoots amongst the debris of the winter. yay! it's almost spring.

early wonder beet nabbed from same web site

The big upside to it being January is the fresh excitement of a new gardening year. I have been getting seed catalogues in the post and looking up some on line, drawing up my rotation plan and now doing a seed inventory to check what is out of date and what must be ordered to fill in any emerging gaps.This is quite possibly the most dangerous time of the year when just the possibilities alone make you do crazy things, ordering far too much seed and losing the plot over unusual or rare varieties.That's why I do a seed inventory first to make sure I'm not ordering yet more of something that I already have 5 packets of (you would be amazed how often this happens, a bit like my dad perpetually buying soap and toilet paper on every shopping trip).

De bourbonne cucumber from same site as two above

My big guilt is over flower seeds which I begin the year promising to sow and fail catastrophically to do. I have a full tin of flower seeds, a glut in particular of poppies, and this year they must be sown!!! So I swear, on this blog, to faithfully sown them. Please be sure to ask if you haven't seen a related post as I will need considerable prodding to actually sow them all. The lazy gardener in me says weed the potager terrace and toss them on the soil, poppies don't want to be transplanted at all so it makes sense. Getting down to the weeding is the bother...I feel like one of Jacks bees trying to get pumped up to fly, perhaps some badly needed sunshine would do the trick?

If you are ordering seeds there is a wonderful plethora of seed companies to check out.

Irish seed companies who produce seeds here (grown and harvested on Irish soil) include;
Brown Envelope Seeds (catalogue on line only so far this year)
Kylemore Abbey Seeds (small selection, but some interesting seeds, all pre-1910)
Irish Seed Savers Association   (more seed varieties available to members and old potato varieties only available to members)

Irish seed companies importing Organic seeds and non Organic seeds from the UK and EU include;
The Vegetable Seed Company (The baby of quick crop.ie and Klaus Leitenberger)
The Organic Centre (importing from mostly the UK)
Seedaholic (great website)

Organic spud/onion sets/garlic and vegetable seeds supplier;
Fruit Hill farm (not printing a catalogue on line only this year)

After that there are of course lots of specialist on line suppliers like seeds of Italy, heirloom tomatoes and American pumpkins etc for you to knock yourself out over. And then all the ones going for free with gardening magazines, in the supermarkets and the garden shops. Try not to go too mad!!!!

PS; am awaiting my bio dynamic sowing calendar from amazon, if you use it too but cant find it locally click on the link here