I went a little overboard this season.

Since August, I've started 57 different plants either indoors or by direct seed including five different varieties of foxglove, eight different varieties of poppies, and ten different varieties of lettuce. My parents came over for lunch on Sunday, and my mother rightly asked, "Where are you going to plant all of this??" Good question, Mom. Very good question.

For me, the indoor seed-starting process is a calming, meditative endeavor that I will use to relax and decompress. I've always been drawn to activities that keep both my hands and my brain occupied like sewing, pottery or cooking. It quiets monkey brain and breaks patterns of unhealthy rumination.

This morning, I got to thinking about some things I've found particularly useful over the past few weeks during this gardening and seed-starting frenzy; tools and supplies that have become indispensable. Thought I would share.

Here is what I'm loving right now:

A.M. Leonard Snips and Watering Wand

A.M. Leonard is a brand that I’ve been using more and more in recent years. My first AML product was a hori hori knife that is still my #1 all-time favorite gardening tool. (Thank goodness for the bright orange handle otherwise it would be buried forever somewhere in my garden. I have such a bad habit of leaving things all over the place.) Recently, I bought their snips and their watering wand. I’m loving both. The snips have a comfortable grip and sharp blades. The watering wand handle is covered with a layer of foam which feels good in the hand.

20-Row Seed Flats

The idea behind these channel seed flats is that it saves heat mat space because you can germinate hundreds of seeds in one tray. But even during summer seed-starting when heat mats aren’t necessary, these flats save a lot of space in my seed-starting station. Seeds are sown densely in the channel, then seedlings are pricked out after germination and potted up into cell trays. Because different plants germinate and grow at different rates, I can pot up seedlings as necessary over the course of a few weeks. I will explain, teach and demonstrate this method in detail during my new Advanced Indoor Seed-Starting class this January. (Stay tuned for 2026 educational programming announcements.) These flats are available from Johnny's Seeds.

Mason Jar Vacuum Sealer

I still have hundreds of onions from this year’s spring harvest, and I need to move them out of the garage fridge to make room for chilling tulips (you can’t store them together). As a result, I’ve been freezing as many sliced, diced, and caramelized onions as possible. To reduce my reliance on plastic, I’m moving towards freezing things in glass jars (tip: freeze first on tray then transfer to the containers). This vacuum sealer fits over both wide-mouth and regular-mouth mason jars to suck out all the air. I have also been using it in the pantry for extending the shelf life and freshness of pantry items used less frequently like panko bread crumbs (you never end up using that whole box at once) or cornmeal. (Note: This works with the rubber-seal canning lids, but you can't use this in lieu of water bath canning.)

Wall herb garden

My last house had a second-floor balcony where I grew flowers in railing planters. I re-purposed these planters (Lechuza brand) at my new house by mounting them to the wall of my garage that gets morning sun. It’s been the perfect little herb garden with parsley (Giant of Italy from Johnny’s, a "Best of 2025" plant), chives, lemon balm, mint and thyme. I’ll replace the lemon balm and mint with cilantro and dill for winter growing. When a freeze threatens, I can simply take the planters off the wall and move into the garage overnight.

Black and white pumpkins

I have yet to find a tabletop-size orange pumpkin that I like, but I am pleased as punch to have found my go-to black and white pumpkins. I grew 'Black Bear' for the first time last year, and this year I had success with 'Shiver', a 1.5-2.5 pound white pumpkin. 'Shiver' and 'Black Bear' (both available from Johnny's Seeds) are semibush pumpkins that grow more like zucchini. Both have a resistance to powdery mildew and neither suffered from squash vine borer damage thanks to early season covering with insect mesh and a few preventative sprayings of organic Bacillus thurengiensis.

If you'd like to learn more about how to grow pumpkins in North Texas, I cover that in my latest podcast episode.

The highly-requested new features of the planner

In response to requests from power planner users, we added a lot of new features designed to make the planner more useful and more valuable to you.

Expanded planting records
​I tripled the amount of space dedicated to the planting records section. The planting record charts are replicas of the spreadsheet that I use to record everything that I plant. Keeping good records is essential!

Sample Planting Timeline
​This new chart will help you plan for how long particular crops will be in your garden and ideas for what to plant next. This is the kind of resource that professional growers use to plan their growing season.

Best Perennials Chart
​It's back! The color-coded perennials chart groups plants by color and identifies the best perennials for North Texas.

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