Post by Janice Peterson
I’m often asked what happens at the RBG Horticulture Center in the winter. Well, it’s a lot of planning and a lot of seed ordering! I’m fortunate to have the task of choosing the vegetables for the Spring Plant Sale (May 11-14, see Rotary Botanical Gardens website for details). I spend hours drooling over seed catalogs and talking to fellow gardeners to decide which vegetable plants to offer at the sale.
This year’s sale will comprise both hybrid and open pollinated/heirloom varieties in an amazing array of colors, shapes and sizes. Sure, there’ll be red beefsteak tomatoes, but there will also be green saladettes, black cherry tomatoes, purple slicers, yellow, orange and even striped tomatoes, too! There will be small-sized versions of many of the vegetables, perfect for container or patio gardening. The Spring Plant Sale is a great place to get vegetable plants that are not normally available to the average gardener.
Here are a few of the very cool varieties we’ll be offering:
The Spring Plant Sale will include over 100 varieties of tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, ornamental peppers, eggplant, basil, tomatillos, ground cherries, parsley, cilantro, okra, and beet (in addition to a huge selection of herbs, and also perennials, shrubs, pansies and roses). This year there will be a special offering of a dozen vegetables from our Heirloom Garden collection. The complete list of the vegetables and herbs will be posted on the Rotary Botanical Gardens website by early March.
Photo credits: Thank you to Mark Dwyer for supplying RBG plant sale photos for this post.
Janice Peterson has been on staff as a Grounds Horticulturist at RBG since 2002. She has been involved in a variety of projects including: the Thomas Jefferson Garden, the Heirloom Garden, and the Horticulture Building vegetable and perennial beds. She also helps organize our spring and fall plant sales, maintains the educational cutting display in the Parker Education Center, and leads a weekly gardening group for young adults with disabilities.