Gayle,

I haven't had a lot of time to look through the seed catalogs yet.....too much holiday stuff going on.....but I have ordered a couple of tomato varieties from Burpee to add to my extensive collection of tomato seeds. (You can never have too many!)

I do like Marianna's Peace quite a lot but it seems to taste better when grown in hotter, drier years.

I don't grow snow peas here, mostly because we usually warm up really early here in southern Oklahoma and the weather seems to go from 'too hot' to 'too cold' overnight.

I tend to prefer the spiney okra here because our large deer population LOVES okra, and the spines are my only hope for getting any okra for the humans at all. (All I want for Christmas is an 8' tall garden fence to replace my 4' tall fence!) However, Clemson Spineless is our favorite spineless okra. It is an oldie but a goodie. Baker Creek (www.rareseeds.com) offers a variety of heirloom okras also.

The ONLY way I know to keep bermuda out of the asparagus bed is to absolutely remove ALL the bermuda, every single tiny shred of stolon, before planting and then remain hyper-vigilant forever after! Heavy, heavy mulching helps as does digging out any and every bit of bermuda grass as soon as it appears in the bed. Keeping a very heavily mulched pathway about 2' wide on all sides of the asparagus also helps.....the farther away you can keep the bermuda grass from the bed, the better! You have to keep the bermuda grass out of the aspagus bed because once the bermuda invades the bed, there is not much you can do except hand-dig it out of the bed, and that often damages the asparagus crowns and root system. Also, be sure to keep nearby bermuda from going to seed and sending those seeds into the asparagus bed to sprout.

It was a combination of too cool, too rainy, too cloudy, etc. for many crops last year, and mostly likely, that was true of your squash and eggplants. Mine didn't perform well until late July to early August, and only then because the rains stopped here at that point and it did get hot and dry (finally!) in our part of the state.

I'm hoping for hotter, drier weather this year so the veggie garden will thrive and produce like crazy.

After Christmas, I hope to do some serious planning for the spring veggie garden.

Dawn

I grow out a non plant variety patented variety of snap pea called Sugaree. I believe I got my original seed from Johnny's Selected Seeds. But apparently they no longer offer it.

The okra we've grown for almost ten years now is a Louisiana heirloom called Stewart's Zeebest. It's relatively spineless and has long slender pods. Occasionally they can reach a foot in length before they get tough. I got my seed in a swap through the National Gardening magazine back in the early 90s. What we like about this variety is that it branches a lot. The plants are bushy, and every branch produces.

[IMG]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m21/kg8da/zeebest_loaded.jpg[/IMG]

George
Tahlequah, OK

PS. I can't seem to get the picture to display. Here's a direct link.

Here is a link that might be useful:

I have ordered .

Carrots

. Touchon

Tomatoes

. Cherokee Purple
. Bloody Butcher
. Yellow Pear
. Christmas Grapes

I ordered a couple of Nanking cherry trees from www.freetreesandplants.com. I read about it in another forum. Apparently nurseries give their surplus to a workshop for developmentally disabled adults. That's right up my alley, as I work for an agency that provides jobs for developmentally disabled adults. We have several businesses under our roof: a recycling center, a thrift shop, a confidential document shredding service, and contract services, where mostly they fold shop towels for a local laundry and assemble parts packets for a manufacturing company.

Before I went to work there I had little exposure to mentally retarded individuals. (Yes, it's a little politically incorrect, but that IS a true medical diagnosis still). So I was a little wary at first. You hear stories about them doing all kinds of wierd things. I have to tell you, this is the most rewarding job I've ever had and I've grown to love each and every one of the 75 persons with disabilities that we serve. It's a little more noisy than other places. Many of them don't have "inside voices"!

So anyway, the price was right, at $7 something for two trees (postage and handling). If they are like we are, they really don't make a profit on what they are doing. It's more so that people will have meaningful work. We get credits from the State to help pay their paychecks. United Way helps us. We throw fundraisers and get individual donations. We stay afloat, sometimes just barely! Recently we've merged with the agency that provides housing and home staff. They are better funded than we are, and it helps eliminate some duplication since we serve some of the same clients.

Anyway, I rambled again. Bad habit of mine.

I also ordered a bunch of seed from Swallowtail Gardens in California. They don't take Discover Card and that's the only card I carry so I had to order by mail and send a check, and I didn't keep a copy of my list! Now I don't remember all that I ordered. It'll be like Christmas when my package comes. ;)

Atwoods has their seeds in and the price reduced this week, so I gave in and bought a few to start indoors.

I want to try to get some very early paste tomatoes and slicing tomatoes this year. I am hoping to eat one by Memorial Day either via potting or raised bed covers.
You guys have inspired my.

To get a picture direct in to the message use the html code line.

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Moni