January: Seed Catalogs, Wishful Thinking, and Actual Planning

January is the month where I spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at seed catalogs. The garden is frozen, the plants are dormant, and there's nothing else to do except plan what the summer could look like. It's one of my favourite parts of the gardening year.

What Worked Last Year

Before ordering anything new, I always look back at what performed well and what didn't. The Sungold tomatoes are a permanent fixture — they went on the list without any debate. The Black Krim was excellent and is coming back. The Yellow Pear tomatoes were incredibly productive but honestly a bit bland compared to the other two. I'm swapping those out for something new this year.

The cucumbers were great but I planted too many. Two plants would have been plenty. I ended up with more cucumbers than I could realistically eat and ended up giving away a lot of them at the allotment — which isn't a bad problem to have, but still. This year: two cucumber plants maximum.

New Things I Want to Try

I've ordered a heritage tomato variety called Brandywine, which is supposed to be one of the best-tasting tomatoes in existence but is notoriously difficult to grow — low yield, prone to cracking, needs perfect conditions. I'm going into it with low expectations and high hopes.

I'm also trying borlotti beans for the first time. They're beautiful to look at — speckled red and white pods — and apparently very easy to grow. You can eat them fresh when the pods are young or dry them for winter soups. That's exactly the kind of dual-purpose vegetable that appeals to me.

The Chili Situation

I made far too much chili sauce last autumn and still have jars of it. I'm growing fewer chili plants this year — two plants instead of four. Lesson learned about scaling ambitions to actual consumption.