Seed ordering and starting

Happy Valentine's Day! Isn't this a nice pick-me-up in mid-winter?

It's a good time for settling in with seed catalogs and deciding what your 2010 crop will be. Fedco, by far the cheapest source of seeds, will take orders only up to March 19 -- including mailing time. The sooner you get them ordered, the sooner the seeds will come.
Is there any hurry? It occurred to me that our last frost MIGHT be only about six weeks away. Last year's was about April 9, but the previous three years had no frost in April. The official frost-free day is May 15 in this region, and that was legitimate when I started gardening, but if you delay your planting until then, you're more of a climate-change-denier than I'm used to associating with.
That six week horizon makes it a good time to start broccoli and early tomatoes, which I did this week. The broccoli will do fine, woodchucks willing ( :( ), but the tomatoes will need serious protection or large pots indoors by early April.

Back to seed ordering...

From Johnny's Selected Seeds I recommend hakurei turnips, which are better than radishes and have much the same growing habits, and nufar basil, which claims to be wilt-free, and I have found it so. Three years ago all my basil wilted, but the past two years I've had great harvests. From Burpee's I recommend 2-season hybrid Chinese cabbage, which I have been eating this week from my cold frame, green goliath broccoli, which does better in my garden than other
varieties (woodchucks still willing), and Burpee's supersteak tomatoes, which I make into sauce and freeze and which had a glorious harvest last year. Enjoy those catalogs, and maybe some sowing of seeds!

Pat