The rave reviews at the Cornell site really say it all, but I figured I'd throw in my $.02 on this one. A few years ago I saved seed from a farmer's market squash of the trombicino type suggested by farmerdill (it is slightly different in that the fruits are dark green in summer, maturing to a tan color late in the season), and I've been thrilled with this squash in my garden. 2 seasons ago I had 2 vines, and a glut of summer squash so I let all the fruits mature to winter squash. The vines remained healthy long after everything else succumbed to powdery mildew, SVB and other diseases and I harvested 28 mature fruits, averaging 5-6 pounds each. I prefer their flavor over butternuts. Last summer I somehow allowed my 4 lovely seedlings to dry out and die, and then never got around to planting new ones. My husband noticed a few weeks later that the fruit on one of the volunteers I'd allowed to grow out of my compost pile looked like a butternut, and I was thrilled to discover it was actually the Italian heirloom. That one hardy vine was the only squash plant that survived the SVB this year, so I harvested most of the fruits as tender summer squash, and discovered that both me and my husband love the flavor and texture of this squash when it it young and tender. The fruits I overlooked when they were young were left to mature, and I harvested 4 tan fruits and 3 still-green large fruits as frost threatened last fall. I peeled and cooked one of the green fruits last week and it was still keeping well, roasted nicely, and tasted delicious (perhaps a little less sweet than the fully mature fruits). I probably will try growing some of my leftover seed from other summer squash varieties, but I'll be happy as long as I have 1-2 plants of the tromboncino type, and may well stop trying to grow anything else once my old seed is gone. Happy gardening!

I like Fedco and Baker Creek for Tomatoes. Fedco has an obscene selection, but no fancy photos in their catalog. Another favorite place is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. You can order a catalog or download one from their website. Plenty of items that do well in the South.

I was in your position 3 years ago when we bought this house, with almost no yard. "food not lawns" is a big movement, as is edible landscaping, but the thing that took me from never having gardening experience to growing lots of food in an attractive manner on very little land, was the Square Foot Garden method. Also do a search on this site for "front yard potager" and you will see one woman's front yard suburban edible paradise, which should be an inspiration to all. Looks like a modified SFG to me but how wonderful. Anyway, this is my 3rd growing season, and I'm so glad I started with SFG. Although I would use coconut coir instead of peat in the soil mix, from environmental concerns if I were starting out today. With the SFG, it's easy to visualize and plan, a hand trowel is the only tool needed, and after the planting is done, it's almost no work. Very little weeding, and I get to go out in the afternoons and early evenings, just joying in it. Or with a basket over one arm, browse and pick what's for supper. It was the greatest, like my own fresh grocery aisle right there. This year I am branching out on a relative's land, planting asparagus, strawberries, and lots of cabbages, brussels sprouts, rutabagas and sunchokes, and other things like rhubarb and horseradish, that take up space, because we are building a root cellar to hold "winter keepers" so we can extend the $$ we save on groceries throughout the year. But that SFG wrapping around the outside perimeter of my tiny bit of green is a pleasure that my daughter enjoyed as a toddler, and will be helping me to plant this year, at 4. The neighborhood kids always come around, curious about it, and I show them how things grow and pick little samples for them. Their mothers would probably be amazed that they will eat raw snowpeas and sugar snap peas, pod and all, if it's part of a neat experience like that. As for season extending, this year is the first I will be trying "hoop houses" using PEX (crossed polyethylene) pipes rather than the PVC which is so bad environmentally, to curve over my raised beds and throw plastic over in the early season, then mesh to keep pests off (taking it off for pollination of course) or adding a little shade for certain things in the hot season. So that's a new learning curve for me. The SFG website has pics of my SFG in Maine (I am still the only Maine entry in the neighborhood gardens section) from that first year, so I welcome you to come check it out at: http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ Here is a link that might be useful: Square foot garden website, official

OK, here's a few to get you started. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) has some of the old standbys that tolerate our widely changeable weather. Seeds they offer include a lot of the annuals commonly grown from seed like zinnias, asters, cosmos, datura, love-in-a-mist, castor beans, etc. Select Seeds offers seeds of many varieties of heirlooms, and sells some plants as well. A lot of the seeds they offer can be found in other places, but some of them I've never seen offered anywhere else. They have an especially nice selection of seeds for moon gardens (white and light-colored flowers and foliage, and many night bloomers). Their website is www.selectseeds.com. Wildseed Farms is one of my favorite seed suppliers. It carries not only prairie-type grasses and wildflowers, but several of the cultivated varieties of flowers that grow so well in our climate. In their 2008 Wildflower Reference Guide and Seed Catalog (which arrived last week), for example, they have 10 varieties of zinnias, 10 varieties of hybrid sunflowers, and 14 varieties of cosmos, including the dwarf Ladybird line. They also carry a few herbs, and many, many "wildflowers" including yarrow, winecup, lance-leaved coreopsis, sweet alyssum, sweet william, red corn poppy, larkspur, purple coneflower, Mexican hat, Laura Bush Petunia (the only petunias I've ever grown that are able to keep blooming even when the temperatures start exceeding 100 degrees), clasping coneflower, butterfly weed, Texas bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush, and Alamo Fire (red-flowered) bluebonnet. They also have "wildflower mixes" that include a Texas/Oklahoma Wildflower Mix, a butterfly/hummingbird blend, a cut flower mix, and a pack of poppies mix. Another good source for native-type flowers that will thrive in our climate is Seeds of Change. Among other things, they have some really gorgeous amaranths and sunflowers. Their website is www.seedsofchange.com. Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org) offers a public catalog that offers a nice selection of heirloom flowers. If you join their organization (for which their is an annual fee) you have access, via their membership, to many, many other varieties of heirloom flowers, some of which are quite rare and obscure. Two of the major players in the seed catalog world are Burpee and Park Seed, which can be accessed via www.burpee.com and www.parkseed.com. They invest big dollars in breeding new plants and each one offers many of the common varieties of annuals and perennials as well as their own exclusive varieties. They are, however, more expensive than most other suppliers. They do, however, always offer "new and improved" varieties virtually every year, and some of them are quite successful. (New hybrid varieties, even AAS winners, have a surprisingly short life in the commercial seed world.....very few stick around for more than a handful of years.) Pinetree Garden Seeds (www.superseeds.com) offers smaller seed packets at smaller prices, which can make it easy to try a larger variety of flowers. Their service is top-notch too. Johnny's Selected Seeds (www.johnnnyseeds.com) offers a huge variety of seeds, although they seem to be more of a vegetable seed company. Their products are top quality. They do breed some of their own veggies, but I can't remember if they breed their own flower seeds as well. If you are interested in plants that are more rare and obscure, including many natives, J. L. Hudson, Seedman, is a small operation out of Californaia that offers a huge variety of seeds of hard-to-find plants. His website is www.jlhudsonseeds.net. Horticultural Products and Services is based in Randolph, Wisconsin, along with Totally Tomatoes and Vermont Bean Seed Company (I think they are all owned by the same company). You can visit it at www.hpsseed.com. They offer an amazing variety of bedding-type flowers and always seem to be among the first to have the newest varieties on the market. For example, in the catalog that arrived last week, they have the new Zahara line of zinnias (in Coral Rose, Scarlet, White, Yellow and a Mix) which just happened to be chosen for some of the landscaping at the 2008 Olympics. Other "new" seeds they are offering in the 2008-2009 HPS Catalog include The Toucan Hybrid series of Portulaca, Ruellia Southern Star Series (hybrid dward Mexican petunias), Profusion Zinnias new knee-high varieties, which are about a 8"to 12" taller than the originial Profusion Zinnia line, and a new Hollyhock, Blackberry Ripple. I often find out from their catalog what the new AAS winners are. One of the 2009 winners in their new catalog is an eggplant called Gretel that produces long, glossy, white-skinned eggplants that are only 3" to 4" long, and I bet it would you great tucked into a border of flowers! This firm does sell seeds of perennial flowers, herbs and veggies too. Thompson and Morgan is a British company with a branch here in the U.S. They offer an amazing array of seeds in their catalog and often have varieties seldom seen elsewhere. They also offer seeds of some trees, like mimosa and banana. Their website is www.tmseeds.com. I could go on forever, but I'll stop now so others can list their favorite seed catalogs as well. All of these firms offer both full-service websites and print catalogs, as far as I know. Well, I'm not certain if J.L. Hudson still has a catalog/pricelist or if he just has a website at this point. Most of them have places on their website where you can fill in a few lines and request a hard copy of the catalog.