Yep the catalogs are rolling in, the local nurseries and home improvement garden centers will have their seed stands set up soon. It seems to get earlier each year, and more expensive too.

It's pretty funny. Down here many of the big box garden centers don't start carrying summer seeds until well into spring because, um, that's when you're supposed to grow them. But with last frost in early February, we're planting starts indoors in mid-January. So I have to get my seeds a year in advance, if not by mail order or from a nursery.

Same here in FL - stuff in the stores when it's actually too late to grow. And then novice gardeners wonder why their gardens fail...

I've received a stack of seed catalogs but did not open any of them. I only need a couple things and can get them locally.

I don't need the temptation that perusing the catalogs would bring.

^^^ Same here Jack. The only seed I would need to mail order is Ambrosia cantaloupe seed from Burpee. Oddly Burbee will have extensive seed stands here at the local nurseries, home improvement stores, etc and their seed stands have 3 or more different cantaloupe varieties but never have Ambrosia seed to offer. I can buy Ambrosia seedlings here at the nursery centers by late April but I'd like to have the seed to plant a bit later for an overlapping harvest. ....Hey Burpee, if you're listening > offer Ambrosia seed locally!!!!

I'm a little troubled by getting lots of seed catalogs. I almost never use them. When I'm looking for seeds to buy over the mail, I always go online. If seed catalogs were supplied BY REQUEST, and by not printing a zillion of them for people who don't want them, they could lower prices. Save a tree.

Well, you order online from the same companies that put out the seed catalogs. I assume that their web pages include everything that their paper catalogs do. I'd never get seeds from Amazon. Who knows where they'd come from.

Mine has arrived too, yay! Since last season I mainly focused on flowers (Christmas cactus, etc.) to make my home office a little bit cool and welcoming, so this year is all about expanding my veggies portfolio. I always have potatoes, peppers, lettuce, and tomatoes. And I’d love to try the likes of radishes (specifically the white hailstone radish), climbing beans, kales, and asparagus. I’m gonna limit the expansion to these four because of their low maintenance because I’ll be kinda busy with other stuff this coming months. So yeah, it’s exciting to jump into spring gardening. What are your ideas? Maybe I might glean a few ideas.

daninthedirt, learned my lesson the hard way. I'll buy from only reputable growers from now on.

I only get a few catalogs and usually go online to order, but I do like being able to peruse the pages and photos and see the new offerings. I circle or dogear the items I'm interested in and then use that when ordering. I often find things in the catalogs that I would have missed on the websites.

I did get Burpee's catalog recently, but I rarely order anything from them.

My faves are TomatoGrowers.com, Southernexposure.com and Superseeds.com (Pinetree), and I get their paper catalogs.

I had a similar experience to Kate's with tomato seeds, after no seed companies seemed to have any of my preferred variety (still don't 😕), I tried ordering them off some rando on Amazon and it wasn't until months later when I grew them out that I saw they were totally NOT the variety they were labelled as. The variety I wanted is a beefsteak, and these turned out to be cherry tomatoes in various colors. I wound up with a refund after I contacted the seller. It puzzles me why people do that - are they deliberately trying to deceive, or could they just be super shoddy and disorganized?