Read 'em and reap: Time for seeds

It pays to plan ahead. Come spring when you're facing 1-gallon potted organic tomatoes at more than $7 apiece, your inner small-budget gardener will be appalled, knowing that same plant could be grown from seed for pennies.

To realize the economy of growing your own food, and to gain access to a gamut of modern and heirloom vegetables varieties, you need to plan well. That's where seed catalogs come in. Sure, they help you buy seed, but taking time to peruse the pages reminds us of what we failed to plant last year or why what we did plant failed. A good catalog will be filled with helpful hints for selecting the variety so you're successful and return for another season of seeds.

So spend a cold winter day perusing catalogs, armed with hot tea, sticky notes, yellow highlighters and a tablet for notes and sketches.

Don't have an armful of catalogs at the ready? A good place to start is the Direct Gardening Association (www. directgardeningassociation.com). Its website features a list of catalogs for home food growers, and can be sorted by interest area. It's easy to use, with a live link for every catalog plus a phone number for those who want to request a catalog in the mail. For some of us, having the catalog in hand is preferable to just shopping online because we can make notes on the page, carry it with us to read on the run, and pepper the pages with sticky notes.

Many of these catalogs are general, such as Johnny's Selected Seeds, which is a favorite of organic market farmers because it sells in bulk, not just regular seed packets. It offers one of the most detailed and diverse catalogs with a good deal of information on growing each variety to help small farmers find greater success with their crops. Burpee, a seed company standby since 1876, offers fewer varieties that are more widely adaptable. Sometimes having fewer choices makes it easier to wade through the options, especially for novice gardeners.

Also in this list is Territorial Seed Co., which is dedicated to vegetable varieties that do well in the cool, damp climate of the Pacific Northwest. Best Cool Seeds is located in Alaska and specializes in the far north, offering options for a short growing season.

Catalogs are the perfect jumping-off point for those just getting started with growing their own food. Follow these tips to help you get what you need for your region, your level of expertise and the method you use to grow food.

• Select just one general seed catalog to start your first garden.

• Don't order out of multiple catalogs unless you're an experienced gardener.

• Be sure to read the entire description of the variety because, for example, pole and bush beans look identical in pictures.

• It's easier to purchase seeds online with a click than to write out all the varieties by hand.

A well-planned garden is based on the research you do now, which will pay off with all the $7 tomato plants you can manage for just pennies apiece.