OK, some parts of Canada are buried in snow but this is the time of year when the gardening catalogues arrive and we can look at all the pictures of things that may grow in our gardens eventually. What are your favourite Canadian catalogues? What are you going to order this year? Are you thinking more of vegetable seeds now that the price of produce is getting so high?
My favourite catalogues are:
Vesey's (from Prince Edward Island - best tomatoes - Red Alert)
West Coast Seeds (in Vancouver huge selection, cheapest shipping)
Prairie Garden Seeds (in Saskatchewan - family business, lots of unusual stuff
Richter's (Ontario - best source of herb seed, seeds of unusual plants)
Botanus (Langley, BC- beautiful catalogue, very high quality flowers, shrubs)
If you get your orders in by mid-February, some places will give you free postage or a discount.
I will be planting: tomatoes, peas, bush beans, pole beans, snap peas, squash,melons, beets, turnips, carrots, spinach, New Zealand spinach, orache, green onions, lettuce, mustard greens,magenta spreen. komatsumo
Come on, gardeners, think green and let's look towards spring.

I already am. Here's my little tomato crop.
The two on the right are cherry, one Black Cherry and one Golden Teardrop. The two one the left are Heirloom hybrids. They are already quite well along with plenty of fruit as you can see from the close up.

In the UK this is the that I would be getting new seeds to grow- my pride and joy was my Greenhouse-20ft by 11 with Coldframes- heated etc I loved it- now in BC, no greenhouse and trickier to grow. The trendy thing to do here is xeriscape gardening with minimal water but the shrubs already in would die off. We are Zone 5 here so get hot in the Summer but occasionally down to -20c in the winter. I don't do any veg here as the deer, moose, and Sasquatch (according to Oink) would eat them!
Lavender do really well, clematis do ok- Mediterranean plants which tolerate cold also. I love David Austin Roses but the bloody deer eat them and they don't do well. This is when I envy those on the coast with the more UK type warmer wetter climate

I like Veseys catalogue .

I'm a balcony gardener. Last year I had some success with tomatoes, pole & bush beans, spinach, various salad seed mixes & some herbs.

I'm looking for Murraya koenigii (curry leaf plant). Any recommended sources?

This will be our second growing season in this house, and last year was a total washout. We live within the York regional forest, and most of the proerty is covered in trees. There is a plot which appears to have been used a a veg garden but i had noi success last year. I tried corn, melons, pumpkins peppers and some gooseberry bushes. It all failed to flourish. I realise the main problem is being surrounded by 70ft high trees. Is there anything that will cope with the few hours of sun (Ontario, 45 mins north of Toronto) that the garden does get? Also anyhting more exciting than the inevitable hostas for the 'flower' beds?

I doubt that will be easy. I had a look at the hardiness zones and tried to work out what you would be to try and work out what might survive - it looks like a pretty low number- tricky! We need the Victoria environment. I do love hostas as part of the garden here. They just disappeared in days in the UK as the slugs ate them all- here as we are dry in the Summer, they thrive. I'm no veg/ fruit expert as they would all get munched on so I'm a very much decorative gardener so have no idea re that. What zone are you in?

Yes, Richters 2016 herb catalogue lists curry leaf plant. Just plants, not seed, and a bit price. I've actually sometimes seen plants of this at local garden centres.

What kind of trees are you surrounded by? Whatever species they are,they probably suck up a lot of water, and any conifers will make the soil very acid You might try some raised beds - most of our vegetable area is raised beds. You can put these in the area with the most light, fill them with a good rich loam and keep them well composted[ Raised beds heat up earlier in the year and get your plants off to a good start. Raspberries are pretty well indestructible - you just have to cut out the old canes every couple of years or so. They spread like mad. We have a patch of black raspberries in an area that doesn't get much sun. It has doubled in size in three years and we get a good crop right into the fall. My old standby is New Zealand spinach (seeds from West Coast Seeds). Seeds a bit slow to germinate but spreads quickly and is very tasty, drought hardy (doesn't bolt in heat like regular spinach) and stands up to a bit of frost. I'd give bush beans and pole beans a try - you can even grow these in pots in any sunny patch. Some things so need a lot of heat - corn, peppers, tomatoes - not good bets.
I don't like hostas either - terribly boring plants. We have a very shady area under a row of lilacs and have a nice array of ferns all doing well, Spanish and English bluebells, dogtooth violets, and some lily of the valley (but watch out for this one - it can be quite invasive). You can probably get a good selection of ferns locally. Bluebells and dogtooth violet are generally available in Vesey's fall bulb catalogue but you might have a look at sections specifically of shade plants in some of the other catalogues as well.
Best of luck. QUOTE=Teaandtoday5;11854599]This will be our second growing season in this house, and last year was a total washout. We live within the York regional forest, and most of the proerty is covered in trees. There is a plot which appears to have been used a a veg garden but i had no success last year. I tried corn, melons, pumpkins peppers and some gooseberry bushes. It all failed to flourish. I realise the main problem is being surrounded by 70ft high trees. Is there anything that will cope with the few hours of sun (Ontario, 45 mins north of Toronto) that the garden does get? Also anyhting more exciting than the inevitable hostas for the 'flower' beds?[/QUOTE]

I live on Vancouver Island so I can grow a lot of things that wouldn't do well elsewhere. However, I used to live in Alberta and grew all kinds of things that weren't supposed to do well there at all. Zone numbers are a reflection of only the average number of frost-free days in each area. They don't reflect the realities of the microclimate in any specific garden or any particular parts of it. You can usually find sheltered or sunny spots where plants requiring these conditions will do just fine. Mulching things that aren't supposed to survive the winter will often get less hardy plants through. We're not supposed to get much of a crop of tomatoes here but I get at least 300 pounds and they all ripen on the plants.
Deer are a problem here, too, but they won't jump a fence or any other barrier unless they can see a clear landing spot. Six feet isn't high enough to keep them out so we simply added another four feet of cheap plastic mesh to the top of our wooden fence (used a few high poles and wire washing line to hold the mesh up.) No problem with deer in our back yard where all the fruit and vegetables are and manage to keep them at bay in the front flower beds by putting really stinky stuff (made by rotting down comfrey leaves) round the most tempting plants
Don't give up on growing veggies. Read "Square Foot Gardening" - might inspire you. Best of luck.

Problems with pests are going to come up soon. The dastardly deer can be kept away with physical barriers and stinky stuff but what about the surreptitious slugs that sneak up and chew all your newly planted seedlings and tasty young greens? Anywhere that gets a good bit of rain brings these slimy invaders out in force. Here on Vancouver Island, it's slug heaven - but not if you get ready to do battle armed with eggshells, yeast, and belt sanders.
I wash and crush up eggshells (save them all winter) and put a good thick layer all round my vegetable beds. Slugs have a soft underbelly and have a hard time crawling over coarse, gritty surfaces.
The wooden frames round my raised beds are a great place to tack on strips of rough sandpaper - old belt sander strips work well and you can make them even more uncomfortable by putting on a bit of glue and sticking on some of the crushed eggshells.
Slugs come out mostly at night, not just because it's cooler but because that's when plants start respiring instead photosynthesising and give off carbon dioxide instead of taking it up. It's the carbon dioxide that attracts the slugs to plants. This is why pans of beer lure them to their doom. However, the yeast that releases carbon dioxide and makes your bread rise works even better. Just a small amount of yeast, a bit of sugar, and water will make a nice snail suicide bath out of a yoghurt pot.

Thank you!

Cheers Leith- I am kind of caught between a rock and a hard place- I want a nice garden but don't want it looking like Parkhurst Prison!! I have to make some compromises - the garden is very terraced so I can keep the deer more or less out of the top level near the house although they do come in from the front sometimes. The bears get the grapes along with raccoons . That is ok as they are decorative. Re the Zones, I agree with sheltered spots and it is all about trial and error.

With the roses they do okay but only some- I will attach a nice one below- in the UK we were in Norfolk and obviously we did well- I had a 50ft rose tunnel with a different old climbing rose on each upright with a different clematis- hard work but looked amazing. Hostas can be very structural- they don't have to be biting, edge silly the vatiagated ones. I took some photos but can't find them at the moment- they can be beautiful and they do thrive here. I am trying grasses to see what survive here again positioning is crucial . Your climate I think matched our Norfolk one pretty closely. Re veggies, I'm the main veggie eater and so it isn't worth growing much although I'm sure very rewarding

I hadn't heard of hardiness zones, and couldn't research until my crappy data allowance renewed. But it turns out we are in zone 5b. Only online recommendation I have found for short sunlight exposure is baby salad leaves, so I'll definitely try those. Otherwise maybe I should make some sort of mobile veg bed, and trundle it around the garden?

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Thank you for those ideas, I'll definitely try them. Our trees are a good mix but more maples, and oaks than conifers. Pots is a good idea, especially if I get some of those stands on wheels so I could follow the sun.

Just a few quick tips on growing things in pots. Moving them around to get enough sun would help. You can get little three-wheeled platforms to put under pots but a flatbed dolly with a couple of boards will work even better. Use glazed pots or plastic ones - the unglazed terracotta ones dry out too fast. Putting a layer of mulch helps to stop the water from evaporating from the surface - grass clippings, vermiculite, or even shredded newspaper will do the job.You can also use plastic window boxes and moved them around on the dolly. Try to match the width and depth of the pot or box to the kind of root system the plant will have. I've grown loads of bush beans in pots about 9 inches in diameter by 8 inches deep. Make sure there's good drainage in the pot or window box - have at least one hole in the bottom and about a couple of inches of inert material such as pebbles, bits of broken pottery, or even styrofoam or plastic containers cut up. Tomatoes need bigger pots and like a lot of sun - the determinate kind such as Red Alert do very well. Green stuff such as lettuce, mesclun, and komatsuma can be grown in fairly shallow pots. I've grown stuff in all kinds of containers - potatoes in defunct garbage cans (cut holes in the sides and stick a bit of spud in with the eyes pointing outwards), strawberries in old buckets, and tons of tomatoes in containers knocked together out of discarded pallets.
Best of luck. Never give up!