Gardening in January

Garden entrance - in warmer days!

Gardening in January sounds like wishful thinking, but I found myself outside today in the flower garden for a good two hours today doing just that - gardening in January. Normally at the time of year in our Zone 6B garden the ground would be frozen solid, and it's likely there would be a few inches to a foot or more of snow covering the ground. Not this year. This year, the crocus are already pushing up through the soil, as are the tulips. Even the tulips nearest the garage that are in a bed I consider "cool" because it doesn't get direct sunlight until late afternoon are starting to break the soil. The forsythia look like they'll bud at any moment, as do the peach trees.  I've got yarrow blooming.  Yarrow.  And hollyhocks and foxglove with green, healthy leaves.

The weather patterns here in the Piedmon region are unpredictable. Some winters our garden is more like the gardens closer to the Blue Ridge Mountains - cold and snowy.  Then periodically we get a winter like this, where I can be outdoors in my sweatshirt on January 28, trimming perennials back (that I should have done in the fall), fixing fallen peony and plant hoops, and pulling up some of the weedy grasses that sprinkle throughout the garden.

Doing the garden cleanup chores in January, when all of the perennials have died back, yielded several surprises. First, it was easier to see where my nemesis, the blackberry, had invaded the flower beds. I was actually cutting back the Rudbeckia and reached down to grab the dead canes when my thumb was stabbed with a sharp, shooting pain.  Now you have to understand that my gardening gloves, which are less than a year old, are so worn that I have gigantic holes in the thumbs and a few fingertips.  I looked down and had blood welling from the thumb; there was a huge thorn embedded in it.  "What the heck?" I wondered, since Black Eyed Susan, the common named for Rubeckia, is thornless.  I dug a bit under the fallen leaves and there it was, the blackberry cane.  I was able to snip it back down to soil level.  I'll have to dig it up if I want it truly out and gone, but at least I can keep them clipped back if I know where they are.

I was also able to see where a whole new crop of garden volunteers have self-seeded.  I've got Buddleia sprouting everywhere, more Gaillardia, and coreopsis.   As part of my volunteer hours for the Virginia Master Gardener program this spring, I'll pot up some of those perennials and bring them to the Heart of Virginia sale in early May.   I'll post a list of what I'm sharing from my garden as part of the fundraiser as we get closer to spring.

It already feels like spring.  It's 55 degrees outside now, and I've got the windows open in my office.  I've been feeling down in the dumps lately, but my energy and happiness is back thanks to a few hours spent under the soft rays of winter sun with a clear blue sky overhead and soft breezes unraveling my pony tail.  When I came inside, I brushed out my hair, and Rudbeckia seeds tumbled out.  It makes me feel like spring can't be far away.

Understanding the Information in Seed Catalogs

Decoding seed catalogs is an art unto itself. Each catalog states cultivation, growth and planting information differently on its glossy pages. There are enough similarities, however, that the average home gardener can learn a few simple tricks to decoding the seed catalogs.

I like to tell friends who are just starting a garden to focus on the important, unchangeable facts first. For example, you can amend the soil so that the pH value is closer to what a plant likes, but it's almost impossible to change the light in the area where you want to grow a garden. Similarly, it is impossible to change your gardening zone, although you can make some adjustments to warm up an area a bit earlier than Mother Nature determines.  But for the sake of the beginner's out there reading this, we'll leave it that you can't change your zone - which means that the average frost date in the fall and the frost-free or spring planting date is pretty much set.  If you live in my part of the world, the Piedmont region of Virginia, your tender annuals, perennials and vegetables can go outside starting around April 20th, give or take.

If you're new to seed starting and shopping online or from catalogs for your plants, understanding the information in the seed catalogs starts with finding the catalog's key.  This is simple a few pages or a page that explains the symbols the company uses next to the plants, such as a sun-shaped symbol to indicate light requirements or an initial like A, P or B to indicate Annual, Perennial, or Biennial.

Once you find the key, the next important step is to actually read the description.  It's easy to fall in love with a pretty face so to speak, and boy have I done that too many times. When it's January and cold and you can't go play in the garden, the next best thing is to sit down with all your seed catalogs and look at all the pretty pictures.  You flip through and one picture just takes your breath away. You think, "Oh gosh, I've got to have that plant!"  Make sure you read the description fully next to that special newcomer to the catalog.  Note how tall it grows - if it's a tall plant, and you have space only along a sidewalk border, it's not a good choice. Similarly if the only area you have is a wide open space, one or two bushy plants are going to get lost visually among the other plants in the garden.

Note factors in the descriptions about its disease resistance, growth habits (trailing, bushy, etc.) and any special care needs it might have.  A garden catalog or website cannot anticipate every special needs your plant may have. I want to grow figs here on our property and add one or two fig trees. Where I used to live on Long Island, New York, fig trees had to be carefully cut back, wrapped in plastic and completely swaddled to make it through the winter.  Here I understand that a few types can grow successfully without such protection unless we get an unusually cold winter.  That's where talking to your local County Cooperative Extension people, visiting their website, or at least investing in a good plant guide can help.  A catalog can only cover the basics in a square inch of copy. A book can provide you with myriad details.

I've got my seed catalogs ready.  Tonight, I take inventory of the rest of the garden seeds.  Hubby has been busy creating the new walk-in pantry area in the basement.  I am very blessed to have a husband who is handy around the house.  He is building pantry shelves for all my canned goods, my canning pots and accoutrements, root cellar vegetables such as potatoes and sweet potatoes (and eventually fruit when the orchard begins producing in abundance) and our emergency preparedness supplies such as bottled water.  But the area he is building out in the basement used to be the place where I kept all my seed starting equipment.  We're moving it to a temporary location, and everything is in disarray just when I need it organized to start seeds in a week or two.  No matter; moving it made me realize how many open packages I have, how many packages I bought last year and never used, and what I'm missing.  I bought seed starting soil last week at Tractor Supply (great sale, by the way) and have my old cake frosting cans ready to be cut into strips for plant labels.  The trays are waiting in the shed for their debut.  This weekend, we check and test all the lights on the indoor seed starting shelves, check the seeds, and order the rest.  My focus is again on the vegetable garden and I have almost narrowed down all my choices except for the darned asparagus.  Who would have thought asparagus would be such a nerve-wracking choice? Then again, if you knew me 15 years ago, who would have thought I'd be debating the merits of Jersey Giant or Jersey Knight and itching to play in the dirt again?

Diversity Is the Spice of Life

You'd think a bunch of grown people with three advanced degrees among them would be able to puzzle out the seed catalogs, but no - we're still in the throes of such debates as which varieties of lettuce to plant, whether kale is going to actually get eaten here (I say yes if I bake it into chips; the menfolk are doubtful that a kale chip will actually be edible), or whether to plant white onion, yellow onions, or red onions.

Yes, you read that right: white, yellow, red.  Big, small, tender, sweet, make your eyes cry onions.  Did you even know they came in so many types? Other than a Blooming Onion at Outback, when's the last time you actually considered the taste, the merits of the ubiquitous onion?

I spread all the gardening catalogs out on the kitchen table open to the onion pages.  We can choose seeds or sets, single varieties or variety packages that provide some of each type.  The question that others in the household keep asking, however, is:

"Will we like them?"

And that's really the kicker, the point at which I stop, peer into the crisper drawer of the refrigerator at the string bag of onions from the supermarket, and I wonder.

When did we go from pages and pages, dozens and dozens of varieties to one or two, or maybe three if you're lucky, of types available at the grocery store?

The plant world is chock full of genetic diversity. Plants, like people, thrive on genetic diversity.  And what nature didn't provide we clever humans coaxed out of the plant kingdom, crossing this and that to get something new, hardier and tastier.

Yet all across the country and indeed now in most parts of the so-called "civilized' world we think of vegetables the way we used to think of factory widgets.  If they're not all the same size, shape and taste meal after meal, we think something is wrong. Peas all have to be the same size and in a can. Green beans must all be snipped to a regulation quarter of an inch, no more, no less. Carrots must be peeled, coined and orange.  Bet you didn't know you can find white carrots or purple ones, did you? The Romans apparently loved white carrots.

You won't find this in stores, kids!

But we have so commoditized the simple act of eating to the point that most children, if not exposed to a garden early in life, think vegetables are 'yucky' and won't eat them unless they come out of a can with a label they recognize.  I remember when my godson visited this past summer.  He pulled a carrot right from the garden. He watched me pull, clean and cook beets. It was the first time he has ever tasted a beet and he will be 8 years old this month.  Beets don't taste so good from the can, but from the garden? He kept saying, "Mommy, this is yummy! You should make these too!"

I know that myriad economic factors encourage growers to grow the same varieties.  There are varieties that store longer, ship better, and achieve a uniformity that consumers have been trained to expect. But I cannot help but wonder at what a diversity of color, texture and taste the average person missed when they only buy prepared, packaged foods.

As I linger over the gardening catalogs, I'm faced with a cornucopia of choices. The only way to truly answer my family's question - "Will we like it?" - is to grow it.  And grow it we shall.

Now, which ones to choose?  Questions, questions....

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(c) Copyright 2012 by Jeanne Grunert. All rights reserved.  Linking to this post or my blog is encouraged. Copying my posts is punished by the fates in the form of hail, tomato hornworm, and blossom end rot. 

I love comments so comment away.  If you want to talk to me personally about this or any other posts, email me.

Asparagus Revisited

Who would have thought that a simple blog post on asparagus would generate such a response? First, the emails came pouring in.  Several readers wrote that the 'golden' color so praised in the article I read was actually a sickly broom straw yellow; don't get your hopes up, they wrote, since your asparagus bed will actually look like old dead grass and not amber waves of grain waving like golden tendrils in the breezes.  (Well, I just wrote that, but you get the drift.)  Next, several readers commented or emailed to advise that even if the gardening catalogs promise a harvest of asparagus the first year, at most you will get a few tender shoots, but not much.  I heard from two readers with similar stories of waiting two years for their asparagus beds to take off, and then they had so many asparagus shoots they were giving them away to the neighbors because they couldn't eat them fast enough! I can only hope that my asparagus grows as well.

I haven't decided on the variety yet, but it's not because I am still carefully weighing the pros and cons of Jersey Knight against Jersey Giant.  We took two weekends to deep clean areas of the house that were like bottomless pits. I don't know how people move around from house to house all the time. I moved only twice in my lifetime and twice was more than enough.  When we moved into the house here at Seven Oaks just over four years ago, we left a few boxes of miscellaneous books, papers and household items in the basement, intending to sort them out and put them away as soon as we had major areas of the house organized like the kitchens and bedrooms. No such luck. That stack of boxes haunted a corner of the basement, nagging me every time I went downstairs to pack an order for EquinArt Creations (our other company that sells model horses and equine art) or work out on the treadmill.   My husband also wanted to finish the custom closet system he had designed and built.  When we moved in, we had temporary shelves installed in the walk in closet, intending them to be -ahem- temporary.  But of course temporary turned into four years until they began falling down.  We didn't like anything we found in stores, so he designed and crafted a solid wood system that we finished installing this weekend. It's gorgeous, but it also necessitated more organizing, cleaning out and overall straightening up that precluded my perusal of gardening catalogs and books.

I must say, however, that hauling another car full of items to throw out and packing another box to give away to Good Will felt - well, good.  I even went through the linen closet and the bathroom cabinets, cleaning and decluttering things, throwing away things like 10 year old sunblock (which probably won't do anything to protect my skin from the sun anyway) and broken barettes.

Now that the house feels clean and organized, I'm ready to organize my garden. One good thing about declutteirng the basement was that I now have an entire box of half open, half full, hand collected and otherwise gift of seeds to go through before I place my order. And it's a good thing, too. I found Romaine lettuce seeds which I didn't know I have, and kale too.  I will conduct a viability test to see if they are still useful and to see if I can save money and use what I have rather than spending more on new seeds.

What's in a Name? Everything When You're a Plant!

Learning the Latin or scientific classification name of a plant may seem daunting at first, but it's important. The more I learn about plants, the more I realize how important it is to be precise. No two plants are alike just as no two people are alike, and knowing the precise classification of a garden plant can potentially mean the difference between choosing one that's hardy for your location or choosing one that needs all sorts of pampering.

If you'd like to learn more about understanding scientific classification and plant names, I have written two articles this week addressing the topic:

• Hub Pages: Understanding Scientific Classification of Plants

• Main Line Gardening - The Importance of Latin Plant Names

Growing Asparagus - Decisions, Decisions!

After lengthy discussion this past fall, we decided to remove the herb bed from the vegetable garden area and plant an asparagus bed there instead. I don't use the herbs nearly as much as I thought I would, and some, like the lemon balm that grew to the size of a small shrub, I grew for a friend who no longer wants or needs it. Our grand scheme for that particular vegetable garden bed this spring is to dig up the herbs and move them into the perennial garden to use as decorative shrubs and herbs in another new garden bed we're installing.  I'm afraid we're going to lose some, since the soil is literally like cement there (it's the area where we set up the cement mixer while pouring cement for the rocks along the walkway, and I think we spilled a little too much on that part of the garden during construction.)  Then we will transform the raised bed into an asparagus bed.

Asparagus is a bit intimidating for me to grow, mostly because no one I knew grew it in Floral Park.  As a perennial, I know you have to choose the site for it carefully, since a well-tended asparagus bed can last anywhere from 10 to 20 years, growing and producing edible spears of tasty fresh asparagus all the while.  I also know that it can get big, with the tall, frothy stems attaining heights of two to three feet.  One website said that people sometimes grow them as border plants in flower gardens because the foliage is so lovely.  That site promised that asparagus foliage turns from dark green to golden in the fall. That sounds like a beautiful sight to see!

Researching asparagus varieties is a bit confusing.  Neighbors in Virginia who grow asparagus told us to look for varieties or plants that produce spears in the first year; others, they said, would mean that the bed would need time to become established before producing anything worth snipping and cooking. Most people agree we can expect to get nothing from the asparagus bed the first year, and perhaps a meal or two the second year before it takes off.  Then I need to get my freezing or canning supplies ready to store the healthy harvest.

Asparagus need full sun, and according to most sources, they aren't terribly fussy about soil pH.  I will still amend the garden bed with plenty of compost and a few new bags of soil before planting the asparagus.

We're still going through all the gardening catalogs to choose our varieties to grow. There's Jersey Knight, which all the catalogs seem to have, and Jersey Giant, and all sorts of "Jersey" asparagus. I wonder if New Jersey is a good asparagus growing place?  Or why they got that name in the first place?

There's purple-tipped asparagus, purple asparagus, and the traditional green ones.  We're going to go with traditional green asparagus, but I still cannot quite decide upon which variety. Some are only $15 for a package of crowns while the one recommended in my Master Gardener manual is around $30 for a comparable pack of crowns.  My inclination is to purchase both and conduct a test, but I probably won't have the space or room to grow two types.

Have you grown asparagus? Which one did you choose?

Get Free Seed Catalogs

I pulled out as many seed catalogs as I could carry to take a look at them. These were the bulb catalogs featuring beautiful summer bulbs, rose and other specialty flower catalogs, and a few more gardening supply catalogs. (I'm not endorsing any of these catalogs, by the way, nor did anyone pay me anything to show them - this is simply what arrived in my mailbox since Christmas.)

It's a far cry from the 1800s when the Shakers, a religious group in New England, began offering their seeds via mail order. The quality and innovative packaging of the seeds enabled gardeners to purchase seeds that otherwise wouldn't be available in their local community. In my own home town of Floral Park, Long Island, our town was literally built on the former seed and plant growing empire of John Lewis Childs, a businessman and plantsman who started a profitable mail order seed company in the late 1800s on the fertile soil of the Hempstead Plain. And while today Floral Park is better known as a great little community to grow a family, the soil underneath all those suburban houses remains rich and loamy, great for growing a garden.

If you're looking for free seed catalogs, there are several ways to obtain them. First you can search on the internet for the famous seed companies. Most have a form on their website to request a catalog. Fill it out and wait; it will arrive soon.

If you subscribe to gardening magazines, chances are very good that the magazines have rented your name out to various companies for marketing purposes. This is standard operating procedure and really, in the case of gardeners, most of us don't object to receiving catalogs and other marketing materials filled with plants and garden supplies. Okay, you may object because it is so tempting, but it is fun to see what's out there!

Lastly, if you buy from one seed company, chances are good that the others will start sending your catalogs, too. Why? Same reason as with the gardening magazines; companies sell or rent your contact information to similar companies. It doesn't make intuitive sense at first glance, but as a direct marketer by profession, I can tell you it is true. I always wonder whether or not the profit they make from selling the list outweighs sharing their customer list with competitors, but I suppose it must because it is so commonplace in the industry.

So there you have it; three ways to obtain free seed catalogs. One last way that occurred to me after my Master Gardener class last week is to gather all your gardening friends together for tea and a catalog swap! In the middle of February or January when you're craving gardening fun and it's either too cold or snowy, why not throw a little gardening get together at your home? Everyone should bring either some seed catalogs or gardening magazines they want to "swap". Provide tea and cookies or snacks and have a fun afternoon hanging out and flipping through the gardening periodicals, dreaming of the time to come when you can actually plant those wonderful seeds and plants. You may also want to organize some group orders too among your friends; if a package of 100 hollyhock seeds is way too many, maybe split four ways it's better for your garden.

Planning the Vegetable Garden: Taking Inventory

I've got my seed catalogs all spread out on the coffee table, a printout of the vegetable garden plan, and a pencil at hand.  But before I can place my orders, I need to go down to the basement and take inventory among the seeds leftover from last year.

'Fess up. You know you have seeds leftover from last year rattling around somewhere in a box or drawer. I don't think there's a single gardening home that doesn't have a half open seed package somewhere. My dad was notorious for leaving them in the garage or on the windowsill in the greenhouse (yes, he built a little lean to greenhouse in my suburban/urban backyard when I was kid, thus further cementing my obsession with gardening.)  Half-empty packages of sunflowers, radishes, green beans, tomatoes. Somewhere you've got some seed packages.

I keep all of my seed packages in two big coffee cans with tight fitting  lids, one can labelled "vegetables" and the other "flowers."  The reason I keep them in a can instead of a shoe box or a basket is that we occasionally get field mice in the basement, and they have eaten through my seed packages to eat the corn, pumpkin and squash seeds, plus they will nibble almost anything else.  The cans keep the critters out.

One thing you'll notice if you use open seed packages stored for more than a few months is the low germination rate.  Seeds do go "bad" so to speak, or lose viability. You can test how viable your seeds are by placing a few in between two damp paper towels. Wait a day or two, keep the towels damp (you can put them in a zip lock baggie in the meantime) and look at the seeds. If you see them sprouting, chances are the seeds are still good. If there's nothing showing, try again, and if on the second try nothing sprouts, most of the seeds in your package are probably no longer viable. Discard them and buy new ones.

Should you buy organic or conventionally grown seeds? The choice is yours, but in terms of viability, both tend to be equal. If you'd prefer to support organic growing practices over conventional methods, organic seeds are a good choice.  Growing plants from organic seeds doesn't necessarily mean the resulting vegetables will be healthier for you.

Now GMO or genetically modified seeds are another story altogether.  Some people believe that GMO seeds haven't been tested enough, and the genetic modifications made to the parents plants that produced the GMO seeds may result in problems down the road.  If you have worries or doubts about the safety of GMO seeds, then choose other seeds.  Heirloom and older varieties are usually (but not always) safe.  You can always ask the seed companies when in doubt or look for specially marked non GMO products.

When you're taking inventory of your seed packages, don't forget to take inventory of your seed starting materials, too.  You will need your cell packs, trays or pots, plus seed starting mix or potting soil.  You will also need plant labels and a waterproof marker, such as a Sharpie. I always test my lights before planting my seeds and do a practice run with the light timer since I'm notorious for setting the light timer on weird settings.  I use a plain old timer purchased from the hardware store, nothing special for gardening, and it's fairly intuitive to set, but someone joked that I had the "land of the midnight sun" going on in my basement one year because somehow I'd reversed day and night and my plants got 12 hours of light during the night. Well, at least plants don't seem to care - they grew just fine.

Your Seed Starting Checklist

• Before buying seeds, take an inventory of what you have left from last year.
• Conduct a viability test if in doubt and see if the seeds are still good.
• Check your seed starting lights; buy new bulbs if you have to.
• Check your seed starting equipment and buy more soil or trays if necessary.

For ideas, tips and hints on saving money on seed starting, read my article Seed Starting on the Cheap. 

Buy Fresh, Buy Local Chapter Forming for Southside Virginia

I received this in an email this morning from the Virginia Cooperative Extension office and thought I would pass it along.  I'm already thinking about attending the meeting.  "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" appeals to me on many levels.  When you buy fruits, vegetables and other locally grown foods, you not only support small scale farming and agriculture, you also reduce the amount of fossil fuels used and pollution produced by shipping the produce long distances.  And while a pineapple in the middle of winter is a treat I'm not ready to give up quite yet, and that pineapple is better traveled than I am, it certainly makes sense to buy as much as you can fresh and local.

Here's information on our local southside Virginia meeting. I do not see a national website, but if you search on the term "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" you may find something for your state too.

 

Buy Fresh Buy Local Chapter Forming

to serve the Central and Southside region www.buylocalvirginia.org

 

Thursday, January 19, 2012

6:30 – 8:00 pm

Southside VA Community College

Workforce Development Center John H. Daniel Campus

200 Daniel Road, Keysville VA 23947

 

“Buy Fresh Buy Local” is a nationally recognized marketing resource helping to rebuild local food systems and promote sustainable agriculture by:

•      Increasing consumer awareness and access to local food

•      Improving direct marketing of local food from farm to table

•      Connecting local food suppliers to restaurants, institutions, and retail outlets

 

Make your reservation today Eric Bowen (434) 392-4246 or email: bowen@vt.edu 

Seed Starting Basics - Seed Catalogs

Last night was our first night of the Master Gardener class here in Virginia, and as I sat at the table and waited for class to begin, someone walked in with a huge box of seed catalogs.  I have easily as many catalogs, if not more, than what was in her box.  At last count there are a dozen catalogs on my coffee table, a few in the magazine rack, and even more in the recycling bin in the garage. And that's not counting the bulb catalogs which begin arriving in August!

Seed catalogs are so commonplace in my house that I did a double take as I heard someone in the room last night say, "I didn't know there were so many catalogs."  I started thinking about how I learned about seed catalogs and I realized that we always had seed catalogs in my home growing up. The arrival of the Parks and Burpee catalogs heralded the start of gardening season. It was like opening day in baseball - you just knew spring was around the corner when those two catalogs appeared. My dad would dog ear the pages and take the catalog into the bathtub at night to peruse. Sometimes he would fall asleep in the tub, and I'd find a wrinkled, ripply catalog drying out on the furnace in the basement after its quick dunk in the tub the previous evening.

But what if you didn't grow up reading seed catalogs? What if the whole idea of planting a garden fascinates you, and you love the idea of growing your own food, but it's all new?

Let's start with seeds and seed catalogs. Nowadays, that also encompasses shopping for seeds online.  You can pretty much find anything you desire to grow online - anything. I have seen houseplant seeds for sale such as African violet seeds (I tried them and couldn't get a single seed to germinate) to the commonplace, such as sunflowers, tomatoes and lettuce.

You can also find seed packages at your local garden center and home and garden stores such as Lowe's and Home Depot.  They usually start to appear on the shelves by mid to late January.  That doesn't mean that is the right time to plant them, by the way. Like Christmas decorations on the shelves in September, it's just the merchant's way of enticing you to buy them early and often.

The way to tell when you should plant your seed packages is to flip them over and look on the back. Most companies provide detailed planting instructions right there on the back of the package.  Many provide a map with colorful bands across it. Take a look at the map of the United States, find your state and approximate location, and look at the color key.  That tells you the gardening zone where you live. Zone refers to the USDA Hardiness Zone and it gives you an approximately guide to planting various things outdoors.  If you use your 'frost free' date in the spring (the last average date of frost for your area) and count backwards the approximate number of days and weeks recommended to germinate and properly start your seeds indoors, that's about the time you should begin planting your seeds inside.

Not everything grows well from seeds. Some seeds are quite easy to start. Other plants need started sets (roots), bulbs, tubers or corms (root parts) to grow.

If you're interested in ordering seeds by mail, start with the major sites such as Park Seed (www.parkseed.com), Burpee (www.burpee.com) and a few others.  Browse first by area of interest - vegetables, herbs, annual flowers, perennial flowers.  Take note of what conditions you have outside. Sun or partial shade?  That guides your choices to some extent. Most vegetables require full sun, defined as six or more hours per day, in order to do well.  You have more choices when it comes to flowers, for there are many beautiful flowers that do well in partial shade and even full shade.

Start this week to browse the seed catalogs online.  But don't buy anything yet unless you're absolutely sure it's what you want.  As the weeks progress, you may see something in the store that's more enticing or learn about a new variety from a friend. Now's the time for planning!