Hattie’s Garden is excited to announce the first of our warm weather plants are now ready for you to tuck into the ground!

On Thursday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., please stop by the Garden Shack Farmers Market, located at 19884 Beaver Dam Road (Route 23) in Lewes, and then again at Hattie’s Garden on Saturday from 10 to 1. We are located at 31341 Kendale Rd in Lewes.

If the time frame of Thursday afternoon or Saturday morning does not work for you, please email Hattie so we can make other arrangements for you to stop by the garden this week.

We will have our first batch of tomato plants, pepper plants and eggplants. We will also have squash plants, cucumber plants and lettuce plants. There are beautiful nasturtiums and we hope our first marigolds and zinnias might be also ready on Saturday.

We hope you attend the Garden Shack Farmers Market, since we will be bringing a more generous amount of arugula for wonderful salads, and perhaps a smattering of other early salad ingredients! In addition, other farmers at that market will begin to have some early produce for you.

As always, for the best selection of Hattie’s Garden plants, please come by the garden on Saturday. When it comes to plants, we can only transport a small amount of what we will have available to our markets and you will want to come by the garden for the best selection. In addition, some plants need the extra couple of days this week before they are really ready for you, which will be on Saturday.

What Makes Our Plants Better

Our plants are different than what you can buy in a box store. We grow all plants using organic methods and we use organic potting soil from Vermont Compost Company for our vegetable plants. We have found none better for beautiful vegetable plants.

In addition, we must plant several times during the spring because we use no growth hormones and refuse to sell root-bound plants. Our plants are ready to take off when you put them into the ground and they will grow quickly.

Our flowers are also different from what you are used to buying. Box stores and nurseries go to great lengths to be sure your flowers are actually blooming in their pots. They know their customers want to see what the flowers will look like and they know color sells plants.

We know that too, but we also know that means those plants are not going to give you peak performance in your garden.

The show is about over by the time you plant these flowers, and even though you will get more blooms, and you may think they are lovely, they are nothing like flowers allowed to grow properly and planted when they are ready.

Mostly, we prefer our flowers do not bloom in the pots, but are ready to take off growing in your soil. A flower wants to grow because it has a job to do. It has to reproduce itself and it does that by flowering.

The flowers at Hattie’s Garden are nurtured to a nice planting size in pots where they are not allowed to become root bound, are not treated with any growth hormones or inhibitors and are not sprayed with pesticides. We think you will enjoy the way they reveal their beauty to you as they grow in your garden and provide you with weeks of wonderful blooms and color. You will also find that a healthy plant will be much less susceptible to insects and disease.

See you at the Garden Shack Farmers Market on Thursday from 2 to 6, and Saturday from 10 to 1 at Hattie’s Garden.

Yours in the garden,