 Hi there and welcome to my channel. So it's that time of year when we are starting to look through seed catalogs and planning our outdoor garden for 2022. So in this video I'm going to show you some of the seeds that I have just received in the mail this week and we're also going to talk about some planning, what I do and how I do my garden planning. So let's get started. So if this is your first time joining my channel, my name is Tracy and my husband Preston and I are farmers and full-time workers who live on the prairies in Saskatchewan, Canada. So the first thing I want to do is show you some of the seeds that I received this week and talk a little bit about what I ordered, why I ordered them, what I hope to do with some of these seeds. So one of the first companies I'm going to talk about that I love ordering seeds from all the time is Blazing Star Wildflower Seed Company and there's a few reasons why I love shopping on their website and one is that they are local. So they are some local farmers located in Aberdeen, Saskatchewan, which is a very small town. They produce all sorts of heirloom seeds that are native to Saskatchewan. Another reason that I love about their seeds is the packaging that they come in. I'll show you each of these close up, but they always, it looks like something that they design themselves. They're very cute. They always have a nice little picture of the item on there and a good detail right up about each specific seed. This year I ordered another tomato like I don't have enough tomatoes. This one's called a Homs Gelby. So this is a miniature eight inch tall tomato that produces loads of deliciously sweet and juicy yellow cherry tomatoes. Great for growing containers. It's a German heirloom, determinant, 60 days from transplant. So when I was talking on the video I did for the Canadian Seed Exchange, I was looking for some golden yellow tomatoes. I think some people are actually going to be sending me some and I forgot that I did order some online from this company, but that's okay. I think these will be great to also try indoors since they're a miniature type tomato. Maybe I will throw a couple of these seeds into my arrow garden right now and get them going and see what happens. So a few others that I bought from Blazing Star was a zucchini. I actually forgot to grow zucchini last year or buy a plant, so this year I'm going to make up for that and get some zucchini growing. National Pickling Cucumber, so this is also an heirloom. Something that I also have quite a few of is a variety of cucumber seeds, but I think this will be a good one to try. And some lettuce. I have grown a pile of lettuce indoors in my indoor garden this year and gone through quite a few seeds, so I thought I should stalk up on some more for my outdoor containers where I grow a lot of lettuce also outside. So that's all my seeds from Blazing Star for now and I will put the link to their website below if you want to check. Another company that I just received seeds from is West Coast Seeds, which is from the Vancouver area here in Canada. And they are a big company. You can find their seeds in all sorts of garden centers and different greenhouses across Canada and I think even into the States. They have a lot of great seeds. And I'm also very excited to let you know that I've partnered up with West Coast Seeds and signed up for their affiliate program. So what that means is that I share the link to their website in my video. So any purchases that you make through their link in my videos will earn me a small commission and that would be just great helping me out with my channel. So you can check out their link below. So when I was doing inventory of seeds I noticed that my carrot seed supply was very low. I pretty much planted everything that I had so I ordered three kinds this year. I had great success with growing my carrots in containers. If you've watched any of my previous videos from my outdoor gardening I use a lot of those red mineral tubs that we get from our cattle. They make a great growing container and I grew all kinds of carrots in it last year and had great success. So I hope to do a bunch more this year. I got some three varieties here. I got a Neptune, Nante Corlis and these look very pretty, a nice array of rainbow carrots so I want to try them as well. Something that I did last year for the first time ever was growing onions from seed which I've read produces a larger, bigger onion and that was something that I've really been trying to do for a long time. I've always used onion sets and never really had very big onions come out of it. So last year I started onions from seed and indoors and transplanted them. They turned out pretty good but still not very big. So onions are something that I will probably be starting pretty soon indoors. I'm going to try the Walla Walla which is supposed to be a nice big yellow onion. And we really enjoy red onion as well. Else is the Cabernet Red Onion. I'm going to give it a try. I've also really developed a real love for beets. As a child I hated beets. I hated the smell of beets. I have this childhood memory of cooked beets being on your plate and that pinky juice kind of running into my potatoes and turning my potatoes pink and it just grossed me out and I could never did like beets as a kid, never did like pickled beets. And then over the last few years I've really started to enjoy beets. I love roasted beets. I love having beets in my salad. I have a one jar pickled beet recipe on my channel you can check out. So this year I am expanding my beet crop and I picked up these from West Coast. Just a beet blend. So beets is something that I want to grow a lot more of this year as well. I also did a video last year on starting ornamental grass indoors and I just picked up a package of seeds at the local garden center. I think it was called Pampas Grass. It has that beautiful pink fluffy plumes and I did a video on it and I got a lot of views on it. It seemed that there was a lot of people that were interested in how to start ornamental grasses indoors. And they did really well. They ended up out in my garden in various spots but I never got any plumes off of them at all. And I learned through a lot of comments from my viewers that Pampas Grass takes two years before you start to see blooming. And of course here in zone three that type of grass would never survive our winter. So it's not a perennial that was hardy to zone three. It was more for zone seven and higher or something like that. So I learned from my viewers, thank you very much, that Pampas Grass is not the best one to grow here. So I did some more research into ornamental grasses that will be hardy and hopefully produce in one year. So from West Coast Seeds I picked up this ruby grass. So this should be blooming in mid-summer hopefully this year. So I am going to start it from seed indoors. I also have a couple other grasses that I've picked up that I'm going to try. So hopefully I'll be doing another video and have success with having it bloom outdoors this summer. So I also wanted to just talk about how I plan my garden for the year and keep track of everything. I know a lot of people use books and I've always tried to use a notebook and keep it up every year but I tend to lose the notebook or scribble on different pieces of paper that I can't find down the road. So I find the best way for me to log my planting strategy and kind of how things are progressing indoors and outdoors over the summer. I just use a calendar and I keep that calendar every year. I have one from 2020. I have my one from last year and I simply start planning based on our last frost date when I'm going to start planting things and you don't have it scribbled in when I'm planting it gives me a good idea of what I need to plan for and when I have to start different flowers, vegetables, indoors and it's always nice to just try to find a really pretty calendar that you enjoy looking at. Once I move my garden outdoors and I'm outdoors for the summer I take my calendar I hang it up in my garden shed and try to keep track of different things that are occurring in my garden, days that maybe we got a good rain or a good storm or frost, hopefully not, but different things like that. It usually starts out a lot more thorough in the beginning of the year where I have lots of detail and then of course throughout the summer a little less information on my calendars, but it's great to keep it and look back in previous years, keep track of what worked for you and what didn't. So now the fun of sorting through my ever-growing collection of garden seeds begins. It's always hard to decide on and limit the number of plants that I want to try growing. So for February, March I will continue starting a variety of cold-hardy vegetable and flower seeds using the winter sowing method. And for my zone, which is zone 3, early April is usually when I start growing seedlings indoors under grow lights. And then in mid-May when the weather is warming up the gardening really gets ramped up when you can start direct sowing a whole variety of seeds, start hardening off those indoor plants and check and see what perennial plants have survived another cold winter season. So if you enjoyed watching my Garden Seahall and Gardening Plan for 2022, please leave me a comment and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on the next video. Thanks for watching.