Mistress Talia: a sadistic domme

I've got a lot of transplanting done. The broccoli and cauliflower are in! And the peas have begun sprouting.

In early March, I began more seeds... a whole bunch of different types of cabbages.

Previously, I posted about how gardening catalogs keep me warm through the winter. However, after a few months, the catalogs are not enough and I need to start seeds.

Besides the advantage of reducing cabin fever by having something growing in the house, seed strating is convenient throughout the year because you can start seedlings without giving up garden space.

I've been gardening for a long time, and like many folks, have read a lot of gardening books. I bought an awful lot of them before I discovered that many of them are repetitive or useless, then began using my library until deciding which ones were really essential.

The following are the books I find really indispensable and have read again and again.

The garden catalogs start arriving in December, and I am utterly fascinated by them. The colder it is, the more I read. Indeed, from December through February, I barely read anything besides gardening catalogs.

A lot of catalogs are ridiculously stupid, so full of hype you can barely tell what the seed actually is. You read a whole description and finally realize the seed is for stevia plants, but they've never said a word about stevia in the entire ad. There's way too much marketing crap in some catalogs and way too little actual information.

Or other catalogs push "organics" to yuppies, selling organic seed for twice what anyone else sells it for, and sneaking hybrid crap into their supposedly "pure" catalogs. ARGH!

But a few are very clueful, useful for both novices and experienced gardeners, and packed full of good information. Here's my favorites: