jazzie,

Thank you! I am going to add them to my list. I'll let you know how they turn out.

franeli,

I'm actually cutting back this year. Last year I spent $800 between Forest Farm and High Country, alone! Most of those plants have gone to that great greenhouse in the sky, however.
Killing nursery stock has been my primary hobby for the past several years, and I’ve become extremely good at it! :8}

I'd be too embarrassed to post pictures of my garden. Maybe in a few years perhaps, but right now it’s a work in progress and a very bad work at that.
In my own defense, I started with 2 acres of the absolute worst soil in the western United States. When I bought the place the only thing growing on it was bindweed, Russian thistle, and some halogeton. The ground was so compacted that my heavy 5 hp rear tine tiller bounced across it as though I was tilling asphalt. I hired a Case 580 backhoe to come in and break up the surface for my garden and the hoe actually raised right up off the feet when the bucket hit the ground!

Since then I’ve added tons of compost (I get free composted silage and manure by the truckload from a local rancher friend of mine) and things are certainly a lot better than they were when I started, but it still isn’t very good.
I do enjoy the challenge, however.

So far I've just ordered some natural beginnings seed starter, and some rock phosphate, greensand, glacial rock dust, coir bales, and other organic amendments I cannot find here. I have about ten catalogs worth of order sheets waiting patiently inenvelopes, though. I'm glad I grow heirloom varieities of edibles...it makes me able to save money by saving my own seed, so I can spend the money on new varieties to try.

Isn't it exciting how fast they come?

Though I'm already having buyers remorse - i went to put away the seeds that came in the mail & found the jar of basil seeds I saved last summer. Guess I'll be giving away basil seedlings for May Day this year.

I ordered soybeans, cornfield pole beans, brussels sprouts, golden bantam corn, sugar sprint snap peas, and manitoba tomatos (I have leftover tomato seeds from last year, too - Amish Paste) for the vegetable garden.

And for the flower garden, butterfly weed, corn poppy, dames rocket, california poppy, bee balm. And my mother-not-in-law gave me blackeyed susan seeds, and I have a million seedheads from our forest of echinacea.

For potted plants: catnip & basil.

So I've committed to a huge construction project (extending the terrace for the perennial flowers by about 10 feet) and a minor engineering project (putting in raised beds & squirrel-proof cages for the corn. Right now I'm just impatient; we'll see how overstretched I feel at the end of May.

WooHoo! Hubby agreed to the idea of the cranberry bushes(3 foot spread, 6 inches high) out on the front slope! The "Not having to worry about trying to mow the slope anymore" ploy worked! Now, as long as I don't tell him how much its going to COST for all those cranberry bushes, I'll be alright....if he finds out, I may be a dead duck...but, what he doesn't know won't hurt me!

How many peppers do you limit yourself to? I stop at 25, and this year I have 16 new ones, 7 old types, and a couple to go.

That's AWESOME, IceFire. Yum, cranberries.

We have one tiny little blueberry bush but I think it's starved for light.

I've ordered a bunch of things from a lovely site, www.selectseeds.com.
One of my favorites to grow is Moonflower, not the climbing kind. Huge, extremely fragrant flowers are quite rewarding. Has anybody ever grown an old variety of petunias called Giants of California? They look lovely but I can only find them in the burpee catalogue.