The holidays are over, the days are getting ever so slowly longer, and what does a gardener do for fun? Why, we plant mental gardens made of cut up catalogs.

So today I’m going to review some of my favorite things:
Tools: Every gardener needs a basic set of tools. A good shovel, a sharp spade, pruners, maybe loppers, a pitchfork, a transfer shovel, a rake, some trowels, something to throw weeds in while you’re working, and maybe a kneeling pad. If you can do it, I think it’s worth getting the best tools.

Make sure your pruners can be sharpened and that you can buy new blades for them. Good pruners should last years with a little oil and sharpening stone. And they’re worth every penny. If you’re going to be pruning trees or shrubs, you may want loppers too. Get a good spade and a file to sharpen it with or find a hardware store or garden center that will sharpen for you. A sharp spade makes the work of digging borders much much easier. If you like a neat garden, with clean lines between the planting beds and the lawn, you need a sharp spade. The difference between a digging shovel for planting (generally with a tip that’s curved to a point) and one for moving mulch or compost onto the bed is that the transfer shovel has a thinner, squared off end. Since it isn’t used to dig, it doesn’t need to be pointed at the end, and you get more mulch in each shovelful that way. For hauling yard waste to the compost bin, I like tip bags and tubtrugs, but a large paint containers from the hardware store works too.

I’m not going to write about composting here, since I’ve done so recently, but composting supplies are easily bought on line. Before you do, though, check with your municipality: as I’ve said, the city of Chicago makes compost bins available at cost to residents twice a year, and it’s a real savings. I also have a plastic bin on my kitchen counter for food scraps. When it’s full, I just take them out to the bin. I have to say that the current weather – snow, more snow, below zero temps, more snow, balmy days in the teens – have curtailed my composting. I can’t get to the bins through the piled up snow. It just kills me to throw banana peels into the garbage, to waste all those lovely coffee grounds, but what can you do? It’ll thaw eventually.

If you enter ‘compost supplies’ in your search engine, you’ll find plenty of sources. My favorite is gardeners dot com. And just to reiterate, if you want to do one thing to improve your garden this year, it’s compost!

Now on to the fun stuff: plants!

Let’s start with fruits and vegetables. I just searched using ‘garden catalog’ and ‘buy fruit tree’ and found a wealth of sources. So here are some thoughts:
Figure what vegetables and herbs your family likes best, and plant those.

Figure what space you have, and decide how many plants you can accommodate. They’re so cute when they’re tiny, but remember how humongous those zucchini plants get, so make sure you’re planning for the mature size of the plant.

Make sure you’re planting in full sun. Vegetables need 8 - 10 hours of sun a day. Most vegetables prefer well drained soil, so if you are planting in clay, consider building raised beds so the roots can drain well before they hit the clay. I heard a famous gardener talk this winter, and one of the things he said was that tomatoes like sandy soil. Worth a try, right? Compost also helps with drainage. (Do I sound like a broken record? Are you old enough to know what a record is?)

Try something new this year. One year I had some volunteer eggplants growing in my garden. Someone must have tossed seeds the fall before. I had never grown eggplants, and rarely eaten them. I had avoided them because I’d heard they are linked with arthritis attacks. (The story is that if you have arthritis, you should avoid the nightshade family of veggies, which includes potatoes and tomatoes. I like tomatoes and potatoes, so I didn’t consider them aggravating. OK, it’s irrational and self-serving, but hey!) Anyway, I harvested some beautiful eggplants, which my kids and neighbors enjoyed. I still don’t like the taste of them, but I learned how easy they are to grow.

Last summer I tried tomatoes in a large container on my deck. I will confess it was not spectacularly successful.. For one thing, I forgot to fertilize them. For another, they were north of some shrubs and probably didn’t get enough sun. I got about 4 tomatoes – don’t think I’ll repeat that this year.

Try some edible flowers. Nasturtiums an d daylilies both have edible blooms, and they look really snazzy on your salads. You could also try angelica and anise hyssop, both of which have a licorice flavor. I’m told that borage blooms are good in punches, lemonade, and gin and tonic. Before you eat any flower, make sure it’s edible by going online and searching; this is particularly true with daylilies, so remember the name of the cultivar you’re growing. Also, and this is really important, never use pesticides on plants whose flowers you want to eat. (If you normally use pesticides, do an online search for integrated pest management to learn about more environmentally-friendly ways of controlling insects.)

How about planting some fruits this year? If you have plenty of space and sun, you could consider a fruit tree. These are easy to buy bare root online. Just put the roots in water as soon as you get the shipment, and if you can’t plant right away, dig a trench, set the roots in and put the tops at a 45 degree angle; cover with soil and water. You can leave the tree this way for 3 – 4 days before planting.

Make sure you allow enough space for your full-grown fruit tree, and site it away from areas where people are going to be playing in ways that might damage the tree. Remember too that you may decide to spray a fruit tree, so you don’t want it near anything that could be damaged from spray. If you don’t have much space, you may be able to find dwarf varieties of fruit trees. I’d go to a local nursery for these, to make sure you get good advice and a locally-grown plant. Dwarf trees have the fruiting branches grafted onto a dwarf trunk, so you need to be careful.

Also, think about shrubby or tender fruits, such as blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, or strawberries. Blueberries do best in acid soils; if your soil is alkaline (pH greater than 7) you can plant blueberries in containers where you’ve mixed half peat and half potting soil. Raspberries and blackberries shouldn’t be planted too close together, because of disease transfer issues. Strawberries need to be sited where they’ll get good air circulation, and don’t plant them where nightshade plants – potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants – have grown in the 5 previous years.

All the fruits need full sun as well. You can plant them in the spring as soon as the soil can be worked, and remember that you need patience for fruits.
OK that’s enough for today. I’ll write about flowering plants next time.

In the meantime, happy dreaming. And those of you in the south, enjoy your lovely blooms. We’re jealous, up here.