We are excited to announce we will have some salad greens available for you, along with our plants which consist of tomatoes, eggplants and pepper plants, herbs, and flowers this Saturday, May 3 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Salad Greens

Yes, we finally have some greens! Our first cuttings for the year: Pea Tendrils and Arugula.

Bags of either are offered at $5 each and you must reserve them. We will only cut enough to fill this weekend’s orders (and a couple extra) as we want something to bring to our opening Historic Lewes Farmers Market (HLFM) next weekend.

To reserve your greens, please e-mail Hattie by 3 p.m. on Friday, and indicate how many bags of pea tendrils and/or arugula you would like. We will hold them for you with your name and you may pick them up during the time frame of the plant sale. If that time is not convenient, let Hattie know so you can make other arrangements for pickup.

Flowers

Some of our flowers ready for you; particularly, the Benary Giant Zinnias.

Remember that Hattie’s Garden flower plants will probably NOT be flowering in the pots! If you want a really healthy flower, you do not necessarily want it to flower in the pot unless it is a small enough flower to get all it needs in that little transplant pot. The less something has flowered, the better they will grow for you in the garden. It is also best to remove any flowers when you plant.

Nurseries and big box stores everywhere work very hard to get blooms on the plants for you. Blooms sell the flowers and the customer wants to see what the flower looks like. Unfortunately this means an annual flower (usually trucked hundreds of miles to the store) is already three-quarters of the way through its life cycle. They have been force fed high doses of fertilizer loaded with phosphorous and potassium to achieve this remarkably early bloom time. The overall health and life of the plant has been severely compromised and although it will grow, you will never see what the plant could have looked like. This is a young whacked out junkie plant! It has already lived most of its short highly stressed life and does not feel like growing much in the way of roots, so the roots won’t expand or grow strong. And the plant will be susceptible to disease and insects. It’s not the flower’s fault; it never had a chance.

Plant Growth Regulators

In addition, Plant Growth Regulators (PGRs) are used, not just on flowers, but also on many vegetables and herbs. Most of the PGRs used in commercial agriculture (big nurseries that supply Big Box Stores) are synthetically derived.

Like many synthetic chemicals, it is difficult to know just how safe they are. Few studies have been conducted on the use of PGRs on vegetables especially and no long-term studies are available that we can find. What we do know is that a plant can be given PGRs to shorten internodes and stunt its growth, thereby allowing for a more compact plant, one that is less leggy and more manageable and with a longer shelf life. This plant will never grow the same as if it had not been given the chemical. Further reading: Manipulating growth and development with applied plant growth regulators.

But, There is help!

Buy from small local nurseries and ASK Questions!

If you are OK with an animated description of what the flower will look like, performed enthusiastically by Hattie along with hand gestures and a colorful picture from a catalog, then Hattie’s Garden flowers, herbs and vegetable plants will be just the thing for your garden!

We don’t use PGRs and we don’t force feed our plants with synthetic fertilizers. Our fertilizers, if any, are certified organic, containing things like alfalfa meal, bone meal and humus and mostly we grow simply in a high quality compost enhanced potting soil. We grow things adhering always to organic principles.

Hattie’s Garden flowers are grown to the stage where they are ready to take off once they get in the ground (or in another pot if you are container gardening). They are not root bound and they have a look about them we have come to understand as saying:”OK, we are ready now!”

For further reading: How Hattie’s flowers different from Big-Box Stores and Why shouldn’t I buy my plants from a Big-Box Store?

And, on another topic…

We decided we would no longer say the warm weather has arrived, because we don’t know where it is and when it will come to stay. There are many great plants in the greenhouse (aka high tunnel or hoop-house) just waiting and wondering about this too. There are also vegetables trying to grow in the garden that look at Hattie as though perhaps she could do something about this…but alas, she cannot. Once the heat gets turned on, the plants will be ready in a hurry and we will all have lots of growing to do.

Yours in the garden,