Well, just today (12/30/08) my first seed catalog arrived from Burpees! 

I just couldn't resist looking through it and thinking about my plans for my next summer's garden.  We are going to expand it a bit this year - we have raised beds and my dad has some extra wood he will give us so that will help save with some of the costs. 

We did really well with tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce.  I had a bad year with green beans with beetles eating them.  I will try the green beans again and I am looking to also try for the first time zuchinni, cucumbers, and maybe potatoes. 

Question - has anyone in New England grown potatoes at home before?  Our soil is fairly rocky which is why we do the raised beds.  If so, any tips on growing potatoes or are there any nasty bugs I need to watch out for?  

I would love to hear your plans for next summer's garden!

oh yes.... I have recieved at least 4 catalogs already.  I keep looking through them and trying to decide what I would like for this years garden.  I even passed one on to my friend to see if she wanted anything from it then we can do a combo order.

I am in New England and I tried potatoes for the first time this year. I did them in a barrel that I kept on the deck.  It  worked out ok, got about 16 small /medium potatoes per barrel (one seed potato per barrel).  I had some drainage issues early on, so some of the plants in each barrel were bigger then others, so I couldn't layer the dirt evenly.  I will try again this year. 

I had NO luck with my zucchini this summer, I tried a climbing hybrid pot variety and got one small zucchini (out of 8 plants).  I will go back to regular zucchini.  I always have good luck with green beans, this summer I did 4 different varieties, a bush, a purple bush, pole, and one called asparagus bean - which ends up about 12-18" long...neat).   I has winter squash, pumpkin, and melons that over ran the garden.   The climbed the fence and escaped...much to my husband dismay and it crept over the grass he was suppose to keep cut :)!

Last summer was the year we extended our garden - we about doubled the size of it.  We had two raised beds of about 6'x12' and my husband extended the end and side so now it is about 20'x25' . 

Maria, where do you order your plants from? 

Thanks for your info about the potatoes, I think I will try them in our raised beds this year.  Just not sure what kind to grow.  I love the smaller red potatoes.  Someone told me that when they want a potato plant they just bury an actual potato and that gives them the plant....is this true? 

Last year I ordered some seeds from Thompson and Morgan and I think Aunt Martha's Garden - both online sites that I just found googling around. This year I am not sure yet.  The catalog I let my friend look at had a lot of heirloom varieties which I liked to see, I don't remember it's name.

This is where I went to find the infomation on the potato barrel -  www.weidners.com/spud_Barrel.htm  EverythingI read recommend using seed potatoes from a nursery and NOT a potato from the grocery store.  I did do red potatoes from the grocery store in a small contained area.  Later learned that if a potato is diseased, it could ruin your soil for many years.  I don't know how to check to see if anytyhing happened to my soil, and the area I used is not normally used as a garden (it was the area under the kid's tower section of his swingset).  Another thing I learned in my research is that potatoes and tomatoes should not be grown near each other and that potatoes shouldn't be grown where tomatoes have been (at least 2 or 3 years).  I don't know if it is true the other way around.

Wow, good to know Maria!  I think I will have to do some reasearch before I do any ordering of potatoes.  I think I will still grow them but I have more to learn first. 

I also am planning next year's vegetable garden, although due to water restrictions again I won't be able to use more than 1/3 of my available space. I'll have tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, snow peas, lettuce and spinach, zucchini and maybe onions - haven't decided yet about the onions; maybe I'll do winter squash instead. I'll miss growing corn, melons, soybeans, chile peppers, and additional green beans and tomatoes I would put up every year.  I am looking at how to downsize or xeriscape my front plantings so they don't use so much water, it's a challenge.

If you like seed catalogs may I humbly suggest my own website at www.gardenlist.com, I have been compiling lists of catalogs for many years now and I love to look through new ones.

Mine is planned and being planted today and tomorrow for collards, chard, peas, carrots, lettuce, turnips , mustard, rutabagas and broccoli.

The catalogs are filed - the 10 or so that we get. and our garden is under about 8 feet of snow - hard to get excited about planning my garden yet.  As soon as the long sunny days appear to wipe away the snow, I get the catalogs out and start dremaning of my veggie and flower garden.

A big  change this year will be some kind of a fence around our large garden to keep our deer out - they feasted on my beans, carrots, beets, zucchini, parsley, some of the corn and pumpkins last summer - very frustrating.    They are already plowing through the snow in the back  yard to see if they can find a morsal to eat.  

I envy any of you who live further south and can start not only dreamig of a garden but can actually start planting it!!!

We garden year-round here, but I do need to get my head in the game and figure out what seeds I'm going to sow before the end of the month and where I'm going to place things in the garden.  We have 3 raised beds, but had hoped to have 4 or 5 by this point.  We currently have broccoli, lettuce, brandywine tomatoes, carrots, garlic, Italian parsley, dill, spinach, and cilantro - all in various stages.