In the winter, I'm always asked if there's nothing to do, but there's lots to do. We're working on a new year and have some new ideas. Right now, it's cold. Two straight days and nights below -15C with lots of wind. We've got four furnaces putting out 300,000btu of heat and they've barely stopped running int he last 48 hours. Well, I know at least two haven't. It just makes me shudder. So I need to think of something to try and get my mind off watching heating bills climb, so I think of the new year.

So what's coming up that's new? Well, I won't really go into new varieties since I'm bound to miss quite a few. We'll be having new annuals and perennials, of course, and a few new shrubs. But I'm trying to think of what's fun and what's easy for gardening at home.

Let's start indoors. I've managed to find a line on true edible figs for the house. We've had figs before, but they're been large and expensive but these will be more economical. Plus, I've sourced four different kinds which I'm pretty happy about. My dad grew one beautiful fig at home for a few years and always feasted off fresh figs in the summer.

I've also sourced some good Bananas. The problem with Bananas is two-fold - their size and fruiting time. Since bananas usually get well over ceiling height, they're often just too big. Last year I found a dwarf one at only 3' tall, but it's fruiting was hit and miss. So I scoured for more and found one that is said to work for fruiting in a pot. This one is larger, 5'-8', but it's a more reliable fruiter. We'll see what happens, but I'm pretty excited to try growing a banana indoors. The only caveat is it may take a couple years to fruit. I'll just be patient.

We're growing our citrus still and have our own crop of Ponderosa lemons coming along. We've been growing our own Ponderosa lemons for years, but we've run in the past year. Not many other places seem to grow them so we've got another crop started. I've also got a line on some Italian Chinotta citrus which will be interesting. Kaffir limes and Key limes will also be back this spring.

Another one to try is Camelia sinensis which is a tea plant. I've never tried that one, but it sure sounds interesting to harvest your own tea indoors. Of course Jasmine will be back, including Grand Duke and a few others.

In the greenhouse, we're going to try a few mixes for the vegetable garden. Though we're not entirely sure on the mixes yet, we're thinking of a novelty garden and possibly a couple other mixes. Two or three plants of four to six types to make an interesting instant 12 plant vegetable garden. One will be a novelty garden with some rare and unusual vegetables - Cheddar, the orange cauliflower which is high in beta-cerotine, Gretal, a small white-fruit eggplant with a sweeter taste and more compact growth habit, Purple Cherokee Tomato, a beffsteak type with a dusky red-purple-brown colour and mild, less acid flavour, and others.

Our perennial production is also increasing and we're working on some interesting mixes. Combining different colours of creeping phlox, dianthus, echinacea, and others together to make larger clumps for the garden. We're also working on having perennial garden mixes like our vegetable mixes, but that's a little harder since I haven't found a large enough multi-cell pot, so the hunt goes on. Stay tuned on that one. We're also going to be growing more plants in the field to have larger mature clumps available.

Look also for some nice trees to be hitting the nursery this spring. We're finalizing the varieties, but look for some really nice flowering crabapples and Crimson King Maples to arrive nice and early in the year.

There's probably a lot more happen that has slipped my mind, but my mind is temporarily off the cold. Let's all hope for a nice warm and sunny year. We all deserve it!