Last year: bountiful cucumbers (gave away lots) but the
basil crop was a total failure.
It's different every year!

Planning for the 2009 garden. Not much to plan, really, we
will plant all our usual crops.
Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, squash, sugar snaps,
basil.

All the authorities advocate crop rotation. Nice idea, but
not practical for the small-scale
vegetable garden. 75% of our space is devoted to plants of
the nightshade family,
most of it used for tomatoes.

I had the annual debate with my sweetie. I suggested
making the garden larger,
she suggested making it smaller, and we compromised by
agreeing to keep it the same size.

These days the first of the seed catalogs arrive. They
come during the depths of winter,
when we gardeners are most vulnerable. The cover
photographs of luscious bright red
tomatoes are tantalizing. I have a theory: the people who
photograph beautiful models
for Playboy magazine and then Photoshop them to
perfection... those are the same people
who photograph beautiful produce for seed catalogs and then
Photoshop them to perfection.

Daniel B. Martin