My winter gardening gear consists of a stability ball, hand weights, resistance bands and other exercise equipment in my home gym.

Getting ready for gardening season requires a little more exercise than thumbing through seed catalogs. Working out in winter is an important way to get muscles ready for the first warm spring days spent out in the yard.

I’ve learned this from experience.

I used to think getting ready to garden meant taking a few Ibuprofen before I headed outside. After all, a body can only take so much bending, lifting, kneeling and squatting after a long winter of inactivity. But now I start training for my gardening marathon with a complete fitness program.

If you haven’t been active recently, be sure to get a health professional’s okay before lifting that first weight. Then work to gradually build up strength so you can be ready to get down and dirty in the garden.

The leaves of this crocus have a waxy cuticle that helps them stand up to snow and frosty temperatures.

I caught just a glimpse of spring yesterday and suddenly the sun felt a bit warmer and the cold wind a little fresher.

There’s nothing like the first glimpse of green leaves sprouting through the dried leaves and old mulch to give a gardener hope. Gardening season is just around the corner.

As I pulled back the brown leaves of one tall ornamental grass, I spied the small clump of brilliant green crocus leaves. This little bit of green is always the first to appear in my garden, soon to be followed by small purple flowers.

These crocus bulbs were planted many years ago and I depend on their perennial nature to be my guide. It’s almost as if I start to come out of hibernation as soon as they appear.

Recent changes to the introduction schedule at All-America Selections mean winners, like this Echinacea purpurea ‘PowWow Wild Berry’, will be introduced and available as soon as they are selected. (Photo courtesy of All-America Selections)

Just last week I received a packet of  seeds from All-America Selections with instructions to plant the seeds immediately.

This is a dramatic change from the way AAS has introduced its winning plants in the past. I used to get seeds to trial a year in advance of their availability to gardeners.

This means gardeners will get to take advantage of all the new winners as soon as they’re available.

The Echinacea purpurea ‘PowWow Wild Berry’ is the 2010 Flower Award Winner and it will be available this spring. If seeds are started now, this beautiful new perennial will flower its first year.

Chioggia beets are an Italian heirloom beet first introduced to U.S. gardeners in 1865. (Image provided by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.)

The January issue of Sunset Magazine features 10 feel-good foods for adding a little zip to menus for the New Year. Along with fresh sardines, artisanal tofu and bison are veggies like Chioggia beets, scarlet runner beans and quinoa.

The article promotes the feel-good factors of adding these new tastes to our diets, but doesn’t mention an added benefit: each of these can be grown in home gardens.

For example, Chioggia beets (pronounced KEE oh gee ya) are a small, pretty beet that can be grown just about anywhere.

Jere Gettle, owner and founder of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, has offered the beet seeds in his catalog for the last 10 years.

“They are so beautiful and taste so good, we grow them here every year,” he says.

Parsnips are now in season and every kitchen can find a use for this very versatile vegetable.

If you planted a fall garden with vegetables grown for their roots and shoots, you’re probably now harvesting the fruits of your labor.

As for the rest of us (who dragged our feet on planting until it was too late) we’ll have to satisfy our need for winter veggies by stopping by the produce department at our local grocery store.

But after paying nearly $2 a pound for organic parsnips this week, you can bet I’ll be making room in my garden–and time in my schedule–for some fall planting this season.

Actually, it’s worth it. Cold-weather vegetables are high in fiber, low in calories and loaded with vitamins and minerals. Some favorites, like broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, feature cancer-fighting phytonutrients, too.

The 2010 Seeds of Change catalog offers seed for both the home gardener and the market grower, including the new All Lettuce Mix pictured on the catalog cover.

From an organic gardener’s point of view, there’s a lot to like about Seeds of Change.

Since 1989 the company has supported sustainable organic agriculture and all of its flower, vegetable and herb seed are 100% certified organic–1200 varieties in all.

The company has a large seed donation program and it also donates 1% of net sales to help organic growers around the world.

The Seeds of Change catalog is filled with heirloom, traditional, medicinal, rare and new seeds. New introductions this year include 6 salad mixes, White Sicilian Garlic, Dark Star Zucchini, Totem Strawberry and Fordhook Giant Chard–to name just a few.

Unusual varieties, like Red Swan Beans, share catalog space with old favorites like Kentucky Wonder green beans. Heirloom tomatoes include dependable growers like Stupice, tasty Brandywine and rare black tomatoes like Paul Robeson.

Fingerling potatoes are narrow little tubers shaped like fingers or crescents and have colorful names like Swedish Peanut, Rose Finn Apple and Russian Banana.

When I posed the question to readers about their favorite seed catalogs, I learned about the Wood Prairie Farm in Maine from TheYarden’s LaManda Joy.

She mentioned she likes the Wood Prairie Farm catalog for its graphics, but she loves the potatoes, too.

Wood Prairie Farm is a family farm in the small town of Bridgewater in the northeastern corner of the state, population 612.

All of its food and seed items are certified organically grown, with most of the crops grown right there on the farm.

The farm has a lot to offer, but organic gardeners will certainly appreciate that owners Jim and Megan Gerritsen have signed the Safe Seed Pledge to not buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants.

Tomato Growers Supply Company sent the seeds for my Giant Belgium tomatoes as a free bonus offer for ordering last year. This nearly two-pound tomato lived up to its name.

If tomatoes are the most popular “vegetable” grown in home gardens, then the Tomato Growers Supply Company catalog must be one of the top catalogs in the country.

Although technically a fruit, tomatoes are grown as a vegetable and just about every gardener I know will go to great lengths to ensure a hearty tomato crop.

Tomato Growers Supply Company is based in Fort Myers, Fla., and carries about 400 varieties of tomatoes, including 10 new varieties for 2010. Despite its name, the Tomato Growers Supply catalog also carries many kinds of peppers, eggplants and tomatillos, too.

Last season I ordered 1 packet of Poblano peppers and 5 kinds of tomato seeds: Marianna’s Peace, Green Zebra, Sprite, Black Cherry and Paul Robeson.

Brian, the Garden Gnome, will no doubt bring good luck and more wild birds to my organic garden this year.

Happy New Gardening Year to you! I hope your year is off to a great start.

If you’re like many other gardeners, you spent some of the cold days of December thinking about your 2009 garden and planning ahead for the 2010 growing season.

Some of the resolutions gardeners posted here for our resolutions contest in December, appeared on the Baltimore Sun Newspaper’s website in Susan Reimer’s “Garden Variety” blog on January 1.

I think every gardener can relate to other gardener’s resolutions. Who hasn’t vowed to set a garden budget and then blow it at the first garden sale in spring? I’m also guilty of going plant crazy, buying too many beautiful plants and then searching for a spot to plant them.