So just a few precious moments are mine today to ponder the production of our 2009 Park Seeds catalog. Sometimes I get so caught up in the process that I forget how unbelievably exciting some of this stuff is! I can’t wait to see our customers respond to some of these products. I wonder how many of you are going to return to your love of vegetable gardening this year to help ease the strain of increasing produce costs at the grocery store? I’m hoping you consider it, because there are some exciting new vegetables in this catalog, including All-America Selections award winners for 2009. There are also vegetable varieties that we at Park have been excited about for months, and I am eagerly waiting for you to see them!
And flowers - where do I begin? I can only imagine the intense interest of our avid gardeners as they see the totally new flower genus we will be offering this spring for the first time on the pages of our catalog.
I must apologize for being cryptic, but I certainly cannot be held responsible for letting the cat out of the bag, now can I? Our catalog will be in your hands before we know it, and I will wonder where the time has gone! We are almost upon the final stages of catalog production here. As I review each catalog page in its final stages, I imagine our customers curled up in their favorite chair at home with these pages looking for the products that will make their garden sing come springtime. For me, personally, 2009 will be a special spring, with a special garden in mind. My husband, the techie extraordinaire, is excited about growing a vegetable garden this year. It will be his first garden ever, and I cannot wait to share that experience with him. Any advice on gardening with spouses? Should I try to get him competing with my own little plot? I love this note we received from Donna in GA about her competition with her husband:
My husband and I had a little competition going this year! He has always grown Silver Queen and been quite successful, while I'm generally the flower gardener in the family.
This year though, your e-mail newsletter, which included the instructions for the Three Sisters, intrigued me, so I made 30 hills with the Mirai corn as the centerpiece of each one. I also planted pole beans, winter squash, and pie pumpkins (all seeds from Park) which all produced abundantly. It was the corn that surprised us, both, the most! Every single stalk produced at least two delicious ears, so we had a wonderful yield. The flavor and texture was absolutely incredible. Even when we cut it off the cob and used it for creamed corn, it was still sweet and crunchy, not "chewy" as some corn tends to be. Next year I will plant even more, and, by the way, hubby's Silver Queen didn't do nearly as well...
Nothing like a healthy challenge to get those love lights burning! Or should we go with the cooperative teamwork approach? Let me know what you think!
Seed ya later!
Gardening. Outdoors. Horticulture. These are the three things I think of when it comes to my passions. My name is Chris Browne and I am the Trial Gardens Manager here at Park Seed. My passion for the horticulture industry was sparked by a summer landscaping job when I was only 14 years old. I found myself yearning for more knowledge about plants and why they grew the way they did. As each year went by, I promised myself to always find a summer job that would help grow my experience and understanding. 
