This week I received the 2010 catalog from Lilypons Water Gardens, a water gardening supplier in Adamstown, Maryland. The catalog is useful, informative and nice to look at. The company byline says it all —

The Source for Water Gardening Since 1917

These guys are into water gardening! I remember lots of ponds, water lilies and potted plants when visiting the their water garden center over 20 years ago. Nice day.

Photos of water lilies in the 2010 Lilypons catalog are enlarged to show just the blossom and large enough to really see the blossom. Photos include closeups of —

• hardy water lilies
• tropical water lilies
• lotus
• iris
• bog plants
• tropical bogs
• goldfish and koi

The rest of the catalog serves to dish out planting supplies, pond filters and pumps, tools, liners and cleaners.

Pay attention to the headers and footnotes on the water lily pages, where the hardiness and care requirements are listed for each page. This information could be better placed right in the Plant Guide that details the spread and lighting requirements for each plant. At any rate all the information is there if you’re not too sure about planting water lilies in your pond.

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Reducing water consumption is important to many of us, especially for those in dryer climates. A fantastic resource for you guys in the deserts is High Country Gardens. From Santa Fe they offer a nice selection of native plants that require less care and attention than the tropical imports and the highly hybridized annuals that are pushed at garden centers every year.

If you have an interest in any of the following you should sign up to receive the Xeriscape Gardening Newsletter.

• Xeriscape Perennials
• Hardy Garden Perennials
• Groundcovers
• Ornamental Grasses
• Shrubs & Conifers
• Native Plants
• Cacti and Succulents

The past few weeks I’ve seen beautifully illustrated emails on the topics of using ornamental grasses, gardening with color, perennials, dahlias, thymes and salvias, and even one about Blue Orchard Mason Bee Nest Tubes for Spring.

The online catalog is handsome. Clean lines, not too cluttered, yet full of information. Tool tips pop up with item specifics when you hover your mouse pointer over the large-enough thumbnail pictures. Each item details page gives plenty of details on the particular plant and its growing requirements.

Herbs are not too plentiful in the High Country Gardens Catalog. Only 6 herbal items, and they’re potted plants:

Artemisia abrotanum ‘Tangerine’
Hyssopus officinalis
Lavandula x intermedia ‘Provence’
Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Irene’™
Salvia officinalis ‘Minima’
Thymus sp.

Like I said though, if you’re interested in gardening with a green intent, then subscribe to the newsletter. It will give you ideas on how to use native plants in your gardens, especially perennials, ground covers and grasses.

As was expected… both my physical and virtual mail boxes are now full. That was predictable. What I wasn’t ready for were the beautiful pictures and wealth of information in these catalogs. It’s all out there. I’ll be pointing you the way to the best resources, but for now a quick tip.

For a fast discount I recommend registering with the gardening websites that are of interest to you. Why?

• By law, their newsletters or weekly emails have to stop coming when you unsubscribe, so there’s no trouble with giving them your email address. If you no longer want to receive it, just unsubscribe.
• Any of the digital versions that you choose is a wiser, more environmentally-friendly or eco-friendly choice than the paper versions of catalogs.
• Many of the seed companies have internet only or online discounts, so take advantage of them.

Sign up for newsletters if you can and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with discount offers. Good luck! I hope you find some real gems.

In the catalog guide you’ll find contact information for 92 companies that offer seeds and plants for your gardens, including their addresses, phone numbers and clickable links to their online offerings.

The original database was trimmed down to include only companies located in the U.S.A. Unfortunately, federal regulations have stopped shipments of live plants coming in from Canada and other parts of the world. Some foreign companies have voluntarily quit shipping anything to the U.S. due to the newer, more stringent rules. That’s ok, we’d like to show our support for businesses that can claim Made in the U.S.A., so from now on we’ll only be mentioning American businesses.

Make sure to check out the websites as many of these companies have Web Only Specials that you might like to take advantage of!

Beyond the contact info, the catalog guide describes products from each company so you can find out who is offering bulbs and who is selling lettuce seeds.

Our goal is to ultimately provide an online service that is searchable so you can find where to purchase tarragon seeds or mesclun mixes for your early Spring garden.

If you sign up for usethatherb’s RSS feed, you’ll be notified when we have new content on usethatherb.com. Sign up today – you don’t even need to give us your email address.

The database will contain the contact details for each company that supplies seeds, tools and equipment to home and backyard gardeners. Each will be identified as to their offerings online and in print.

Of special interest to me are the herb seeds and heirloom seeds that are available, so special attention will be paid to those catalogs offering non-hybrid seeds.

If anyone has interest in a downloadable PDF of the gardening and seed catalog database, please leave a comment!

The time-line for planting moves further north later in the year. The further north you go, the shorter the growing season. To take full advantage of the number days in a growing season many gardeners start seeds indoors, regardless of the location.

Starting seeds indoors under lights can give your flower and vegetable gardens quite a boost. The key ingredient to being successful here is to maintain a humid and well-lit environment for germinating and growing your plants.

According to where you live, what is your time of last frost or day of last freeze? That is one important date, but remember it is only an average date. Some years will see more or less freezing weather, so you have to use your judgment a little bit in deciding when to start sowing and growing your seeds.

Some gardening and seed catalogs provide planting schedules where you can look up the suggested planting dates for various plants based on an average last frost date. For example, the first planting of lettuce will range from Feb 1 through May 1 depending on the average last frost date. For a last frost date of March 30, plant your lettuce on Feb 15; for a last frost date of April 10 plant lettuce on March 10.

Many seed packages tell when to plant seeds, like how many weeks before the frost/freeze date.

Find your local Last Frost Date or FrostFreeze date by visiting National Climatic Data Center.

To get the real scoop on when to plant in your area check out local gardening clubs or ask any gardener you admire. Check with your local Cooperative Extension service – they’ll be able to tell you your last frost freeze date and lots more!

Around central Pennsylvania we can look forward to the week of April 15 for our last frost/freeze date and a growing season of about 180 days.

Starting seeds indoors you can get a whole lot more fruit-n-flowers from your gardens. You’ll probably need to start about six weeks before the last frost/freeze date for your area, but check your seed packets for more information. For us, that makes the week of March 4 a seed-planting week and that’s only 2 weeks away!

If those gardening catalogs don’t arrive pretty quick I’ll have to do more shopping online – it’s just as fun! Look at this seed starter I just found:

The Original Park Seed Bio Dome SHOP NOW!

10 % OFF All Orders $25 or more! Order now and Save!

To make it a little easier to find the information about the offerings of the different gardening catalog companies, I’m creating a database. In the future all I’ll have to do is refer to information that I’ve already gathered to recall where I purchased a particular seed or plant. The seed catalog database will have information about the companies and the products they offer, as well as reviews of the online and print catalogs.

In the spirit of helping others I’ll make the database available to anyone stopping by usethatherb.com – I’ll even let you download a pdf file of the database contents whenever it’s ready, that is.

So far I’ve requested a couple dozen print catalogs to be sent to me via snail mail. I know some of these will take 3-4 weeks to get to me due to the printing/mailing process, but I can wait. Here in central Pennsylvania the planting season doesn’t start for a few weeks yet.

Why would anyone who is green-minded, like myself, order anything in print that is available in a digital format? Even though I’m acting like a consumer by requesting that something be physically created and shipped to me, what I do with those items can help to offset the costs I’ve put on society, indeed consumer-driven society. If I can find a way to adhere to the three laws of recycling, reduce-reuse-recycle, I know I’ll feel better.

First, many of the seed and gardening catalogs stem from a long history of providing information to prospective gardeners. The shift to using the Internet for providing that information is happening, but at a slow rate. More companies have more catalog offerings on their websites now than at any other time, so that’s a good thing. A few have done away with print catalogs entirely – Bravo! The savings in printing and postage costs should help those companies survive and do well. Reducing costs and paper waste adheres to the first law of recycling, reduce.

Next year, I won’t be ordering those catalogs again because of the information I’m picking up now. Avoiding consumption should be emphasized more often, but we do live in a consumer-driven society and change is difficult. We can still try though!

Second, gardening catalogs are easily passed from one person to another and many of the ones I expect to receive will be shared in this way. Reuse is the second law of recycling.

Third, any catalogs that don’t pass muster will promptly be fed to the worms. Composting paper with food wastes is easy to do and will let us recycle those old catalogs that are no longer needed. Obeying the third law of recycling just makes ya feel good! Recycle.

Don’t have a worm bin or a place to compost your old papers? We’ll have to investigate what other options you might have for recycling your old catalogs in a future post.

Can anyone offer what they do to reduce-reuse-recycle with respect to all the catalogs they get in the mail? Leave a comment!