Your question about what to do to get ready for next year is the best and first question you asked. Pull out all the dead plants from your garden. If they had disease, put them into the garbage so they are hauled away. Otherwise, put them into your compost pile. (If you don't have one, this is the perfect time to start one. Pile up all the leaves you can lay your hands on.) Hoe or pull the weeds from your garden. Then cover the soil with leaves, grass clippings, straw, or whatever organic mulch you can get. This will stop erosion and keep down cool weather weeds. But most important, it will take away insects' winter camping grounds. If they spend winter break there, they will be bigger, healthier, and earlier next year. If you haven't had frost yet, sow some kind of winter cover crop rather than mulch. Then in very early spring, plan to till it into the soil. You'll be amazed at all the good it will do your soil. You can contact your local Agricultural Extension agent for recommended crops that do well in your area. When you are just starting out it's a good idea to sow the tried and true the first couple of years. In my town, we have Agricultural Co-ops and Farm supply stores that carry the locally popular varieties of seeds. They are a fraction of mail order cost. And finally, use your winter for learning and planning. Read a good basic book or two about vegetable gardening. You can check them out from your library for free. Get a nice calendar and make notes on it for seed starting dates, when to plant, prune, fertilize, start seeds, etc. This information is also available at the Ag Extension office, usually for free. Draw up your garden area on graph paper to scale and plan when and where you will plant your crops on it. Your gardening books and pamphlets will have valuable information about laying out your garden and rotating crops. In many ways, winter planning is just as important and exciting as spring planting or summer harvesting. Finally, seed starting is a great way to jump start your gardening season and eventually is a money saver too, but in the beginning, perhaps not so much. You will need an area to start seeds that provides the right light and the right temperature, as well as being easy to get to to water. Assuming you have all this, most seed packets give good information on when to start seeds. Pay very close attention to required temperature and light requirements for germination. These items are crucial to success. Hope next year's garden is better! It almost always is. :))

kay- It will just give you a long time to add to your springwoods garden order. I know it took me a very long time to decide on my choices as my list was a yard long. And I bought 14 of them so its not as if I only got afew but had such a difficult time deciding which to cross off the list. This fall I will be ordering more Emmerich intros and I am sure that those plants that I didn't get will be back on this list. Kay-phal - Thank you for your suggestion of a late bloomer. I first looked it up on Tinkers and what came up looks nothing like your daylily, wider pedals and much more orange. I did a general search and found what might be it with not such a great picture. Both list it as mid late. Maybe not going to bloom late enough for me here but I will deffinately keep it in mind.

After reviewing my records, I've made a few changes to my list as well. Since I had an early start this year - which doesn't happen often - I'm growing some longer-season varieties. This mostly affects my soybeans, which I have yet to list. Trials are bolded: Beans Bird Egg#3 - pole, shelly Champagne - pole, flat green-podded snap Czechoslovakian - pole, flat purple-podded snap Dolloff - pole, shelly Fortex - pole, main crop snap Grandma Robert's Purple Pole Isla (a long season pole shelly) Light Brown Zebra - bush, dry Madeira Clem & Sarah's Big Bean - bush, shelly Poletscka - pole Portugal - pole, shelly Schwarze Witwe - pole, wax Soissons Vert - pole, shelly & dry Uzice Porcelain - a.k.a. Uzice. Shelly. This year's trial will determine whether it is a rangy bush, or a weak climbing pole. Uzice Speckled Wax - pole, wax Added: Woods Mountain Crazy Beans - bush, snap Limas Cave Dweller (Black Seed Coat) - bush Sieva, Mottled - pole Runner Bianco de Spagna - pole, white seed (thanks to Drloyd) Gigandes - pole? white seed, from Greece (thanks to Fusion) (both will be trialed as shellies) Cowpeas / Yardlongs Bush Sitao Var. BS-3 - semi-bush snap, tan & white seeds, from Philippines CES-18-6 Fagiolino Dolico Veneto - semi-bush, very early eyed pea) MN 157 - bush, purple podded calico, dry Yardlong, Galante - pole, red & white seeds, from Philippines Yardlong, Sierra Madre - pole, red & white seeds, from Philippines Yardlong, Yard and 1/2 - pole??? red & white seeds (thanks to Grandmotherbear) Yardlong, Yancheng Bush - bush (duh! ;-) red seeds Peas Black Eyed Susan - shelling Bill Jump - soup Golderbse - soup Purple Pod Parsley - shelling (unstable, I'm still selecting for all-purple pods) Vantana Matar - soup Added: Prebohaty - soup Limestone - pod Miscellaneous Adzuki, Buff Adzuki, Takara Early Black gram Chickpea, Brown Popping (the popping chickpea mentioned in Carol Deppe's book) Plus 27 soybeans planted for edamame & dry seed. The cancellations are rescheduled for 2013. And most importantly... it's all planted!!! :-) No repeat of last year's calamity.

I grow hostas in pots. I will include a link to a discussion about hostas where I describe how I grow them. I have about 300 growing in my shade garden. If you want them for next spring, I would go ahead and order them now. It takes 3 years for smaller hostas and up to 7 years for large hostas to reach maturity. I have had dismal luck trying to grow them in the ground, but I am pleased with the ones I have growing in pots. Good luck with your hostas. Here is a link that might be useful: hostas in Texas