Happy New Year to all of you! The end-of-the-year holidays are finally complete. For some of us, the visiting relatives and friends have finally gone home. Most of us are settled into our warm and comfy homes, waiting on the winter to season to pass us by.

Most “normal” people busy themselves with inside activities and winter sports to pass the time. Not many people are thinking about landscapes and gardening, but the first three months of the year is the time when the mailman keeps bringing those beautiful plant and seed catalogs. For the serious gardener, the winter season is the time when we remember those plants that failed to perform well during the heat and the humidity of the past summer season, even though we watered them and did our best.

It is time to make “better” choices while planning next year’s landscape and garden. New plants and varieties are being developed every year, and the newer varieties are advertised to be more disease, pest and drought resistant. They are chosen to provide more blooms of harvest than older varieties. If you are not inclined to grow the new varieties from seeds and just want to purchase the young plants, ready to transplant in your landscape and garden, the growers are ready to take your money and send you the plants at the proper time for planting in your area.

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Master Gardener Q and A:

Q. How do I choose the plants and seeds that I plant each year and why do I choose them?

A. To illustrate the sheer number of plants and categories there are to choose from, in a recently received seed catalog, I counted 85 different varieties of tomato seed available for purchase. With this kind of variety to choose from, most people are just looking for the “best” tomato for their specific location. I can understand why the decision making process can be frustrating for many folk.

To help with your garden seed selections, let me introduce you to the flower and vegetable winners in the All-America Selections for the Year 2007.

The AAS Test Gardens are located throughout the continental U.S. and Canada and have been growing “new and improved” seed varieties with superior garden performance as judged in impartial trials throughout North America.

Since 1932, the AAS Test Garden Results have served to inform home gardeners and educators of the best performing new garden seed selections that are available. Because the AAS is independent of the seed producers, they have earned local gardeners respect and trust in the merits of the AAS yearly winners’ performance in gardens since 1932.

All AAS selected seeds are grown and rated by a network of independent judges who have voted for their favorites based on how they have performed in their own test gardens.

Local judges look for significantly improved qualities such as earliness to bloom or harvest, disease or pest tolerance, novel colors or flavors, novel flower forms, total yield, length of flowering or harvest and overall performance.

An entry needs to have at least two significantly improved qualities to be considered by the judges for the AAS Award. The AAS states that its flower and vegetable selections are, “tested nationally and grown locally” to let you know which varieties will give you the best performance in your own area.

If you favorite zinnia was suddenly covered in white during the summer’s high humidity and heat, get a new variety that is more resistant to powdery mildew.

If your tomatoes had black spots on them and dropped off before ripening, or if the leaves curled and dropped, purchase a new tomato variety that is more resistant to common tomato diseases such as Verticillium wilt, Fusarium wilt, nematodes, tobacco mosaic virus, Septoria leafspot and Alternaria alternata, or crown wilt disease.

If you are looking for a landscape bedding plant that produces larger blooms or produces blooms for a longer season or has more fragrance, buy an improved variety that meets your needs.

Stay warm and get those new seeds ordered before spring weather arrives.

Visit the AAS Web site for more information about winners that you can incorporate into your own landscape or garden. More information is on the Web at www.all-americasselections.org.