No, not money. Nor political parties. Nope, its January and my daydreams turn to garden thoughts. I can't plant until late April, or mid-April if I use cloches, but my first seed catalog came in the mail and I'm off and running...at least in my head.

I've actually convinced DH to help me this year (so less of the grocery budget goes towards produce and more towards steak!) and the kids know it is going to be part of their responsibility as well. Tobias likes doing stuff in the garden, Rose, not so much. But they both like eating garden produce, so they'll both help this year.

Here are some of my gardening goals for this year:

Plant enough green beans to at least can a six month supply. Some things won't grow in my garden but green beans are prolific. I usually plant one 8 by 4 foot garden bed with pole beans on 8 teepees. Which is great for getting through the summer and having about 2 gallons left over 2 freeze. But I want more than that, and we eat a lot of green beans.

Transplant our two blueberry bushes and our Saskatoon bush out of the yard and into the garden proper where they will get adequate light and nutrients from the soil.

Dig up the asparagus crowns and put them on Freecycle. They grow fine, but I'm the only one who eats them and so much ends up getting wasted. Better to give them to someone else and use the valuable space for something else.

Convince myself not to plant a lot of corn, or possibly any corn. There are a lot of farms that grow corn here and they sell it for 10/$1.00. When you can get 100 ears for $10 to freeze, corn is not a good use of garden space. No matter how good it tastes 10 minutes from picked to cooked.

Do plant potatoes. They taste better than anything out of the stores and haven't been as cheap in the last couple of years, and they grow well in my garden.

Skip the tomatoes. They hate me, they will not grow for me, it doesn't matter how I treat them, they absolutely will not make it. No convincing myself that this year will be different. 7 years and its never different. Ditto bell peppers. Just give it up.

Plant thornless blackberries in quantity. Transplant thornless raspberries to a better location but not too near the blackberries, I don't want to end up with crossbred berries. Transplant strawberries to a better location. That portion of the garden will probably end up raspberries on one end, then blueberries, then strawberries, then blackberries across the shorter side of the garden rectangle. The transplants will grow anywhere in the garden, but they are in the way of how the new layout will go. This will be their permanent home, though.

Plant leaf lettuces only, head lettuce will be consumed by slugs, not me. Mix in spinach, radish, garlic bulbs and scallions. Do not try to grow onions, just use the scallions and deal with the fact that regular onions won't grow from sets in my garden, even if I plant them in the fall.

Plant 2 beds with broccoli, cauliflower, purple cabbage and kohlrabi, all plants from the same family.

Increase the herb bed, replace the tricolor sage that was destroyed by over enthusiastic pruning by children.

Plant 3 zucchini plants (not more!) and try planting cucumbers one more year, with an eye towards giving them up next time. Do not put the beds near each other. Think about squash if there is room.

Plant a second cherry tree to help fertilize the so-called self-fertilizing cherry tree we already have.

That's all I can think of now.