We finally had our first measurable snow of the winter this weekend. The chickens are in their coop, refusing to venture outside, and the cats are cozy by the fire. Periodically they rouse themselves to look out the window at the birds frequenting the feeders, making that incredibly cute talking-to-the-birds chirping noise that must be encoded in the feline DNA, considering that none of our cats has hunted birds for a long, long time (& for one of our cats, probably never!) .
In short, it’s been a perfect day for phase I of our winter seed ordering ritual: The Inventory. As the name implies, the inventory involves pulling our seeds out of freezer, fridge & assorted boxes, checking the dates on the packets against our handy seed viability chart, and determining what we’ve got for this season & what we need to order. 
Phase II, which is REALLY fun, will come later — poring over seed catalogs and deciding not only where to order our replacements, but also what new varieties to test this year. Which brings me to another kind of inventory — how 2011’s new varieties fared, and which ones we’ll plant again this year. Here goes:
Potatoes
As described in our April 17 blog, we planted two new varieties in 2011, both from the Colorado company Potato Garden — the fingerling Ozette, and the early season potato Purple Majesty. Ozette, a Slow Food USA, Arch of Taste selection, is believed to have been brought to the Pacific Northwest from South America in 1791; Purple Majesty, on the other hand, is a new variety from Dr. David Holm of Colorado State University, notable not just for its beautiful color but also for a high concentration of anthocyanidins, which are high-potency antioxidants. Both varieties were delicious, with Ozette performing more vigorously for us than Purple Majesty but the latter doing well enough to plant again. The verdict: Both potatoes, no pun intended, are keepers! So is the Potato Garden, which along with Wood Prairie Farm in Maine have become our go-to sources for high-quality seed potatoes.
Sweet Potatoes
For the first time ever, we grew sweet potatoes — the popular variety Beauregard, from Johnny’s. To plant them, Ann covered an area with biodegradable plastic mulch and then used a homemade dibble to poke holes for the sweet potato “slips.” They ended up thriving, and we ended up with more sweet potatoes than we’d ever imagined. The only tricky part was curing them, since we don’t have a greenhouse and the weather was cool and wet at the end of the summer. Ann ended up hanging shade cloth from the rafters of our shed and putting the sweet potatoes inside — imagine a hammock made especially for potatoes — and left them there for almost three weeks. It must have worked, because the “potatoes” (which as you may know are actually not potatoes, coming instead from the Morning Glory family) were sweet & wonderful (!!) — another keeper.
Lettuce
Last year’s exciting new addition in this category was Jericho — a romaine with a great flavor that didn’t get bitter. It’s widely available, though our particular seed came from High Mowing.
Tomatoes
As I wrote last February, our major tomato challenge for 2011 was finding a replacement for Federle, a fantastic salsa tomato that had stopped performing well in our gardens. We tried three varieties — Jersey Devil, from Abundant Life Seed Co.; Pittman Valley Plum, from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange; and Gilbertie, from High Mowing Seeds. And the winner is . . . a tie: Jersey Devil & Pittman Valley Plum will both have a place in our gardens this year. In fairness, Gilbertie was represented by only one plant, and as a very late bloomer, it suffered from the cold, wet, fungal-friendly conditions that marked (or should I say marred?) the middle-to-end of the 2011 growing season. But it was a disappointment nonetheless. So were the seeds we purchased from a small company for the hard-to-find variety Prue, one of our all-time favorites: As it turned out, they were not “true” to Prue. So it’s back to our own saved seed & to the network of Seed Savers Exchange members for that one. And finally, – joining the new-varieties-that-flopped category: Peacevine Cherry, which had a mealy texture & wasn’t nearly as sweet as our staple, Doctor Carolyn’s; and Djena Lee’s Golden Girl, an old-time prize-winner that didn’t win a prize with us. As everyone knows, everyone’s garden is different, so these varieties may do well for you. But for us, it’ll be back to the catalogs to find more new varieties to keep that surprise factor in our garden growing.
Any winning varieties of your own that you’d like to share? 
by hiding them under wood chips. Today’s moving at a slightly slower pace (for us, anyway), with the morning dedicated to preparing another double batch of our favorite asparagus soup, which made for a delicious lunch & will do so again next winter (the soup freezes exceedingly well!)
