Last weekend my husband and I returned to Windmill Gardens for their annual Salsa Festival.  It was killing me to have to wait to purchase my tomato plants.  I nearly broke down and loaded my wagon full of them at the Farmer’s Market last week.  I was good and mustered my patience.  It is true that sometimes patience is worth the wait.

We arrived at the nursery fairly early (10:00 ish) and it’s a good thing we did.  When we arrived the nursery was fairly quiet.  We beelined for the tomato section and were greeted with a plethora of plants to select from.  Sizes ranged from 4″ to gallons and prices from $1.99-$3.99.  The $3.99 was for the gallon size.  I was stunned.  That is the best price we’ve seen on heirloom tomato plants in a very long time.  I came armed with an idea of what I wanted to purchase.  Ok, it was more of a number of plants.  If I didn’t have that in mind I would have gone overboard causing me to have to build more raised beds (oh darn).  I was a good girl and stuck to the plan.  My husband, on the other hand, had free reign.

Like my son, I try to get my husband involved in vegetable gardening.  He loves seeing the fruits of my labor, but I often have to cajole him into assisting me with prepping, planting and care.  However, he recently read a few books by Michael Pollan that had changed him into a bit of a local food nut.  I could think of worse things.  He also understands that the food we grow ourselves tastes so much better.  This year I tasked him with peppers.  He loves a good pepper and Windmill Garden had a selection to rival all other nurseries.  I didn’t give him a limit on how many he could purchase.  I said, ” have at it, I’ll make room.”   Have at it he did.

We walked away from the nursery with 7 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, 2 Thai Basil and 2 Mexican Orange.  Here’s what we got for tomatoes and peppers:

Tomatoes
Paul Robeson
Purple Calabash
Azoychka
Juane Flame
Mortgage Lifter
Pink Girl
Snow White
(we also had Black Russian, Brandywine & Cherokee Purple on hand)

Peppers
Bulgarian Carrot
Corno di Toro
Golden Bell
Long Red Slim Cayenne
Mohawk
Purple Bell
(the hot peppers are Heirloom, the sweet ones are not)

I was leery of planting them outside.  Our nights have been quite cool and on the nights I’ve left my  greenhouse door open my fuchsia has shown signs of some cold damage.  I didn’t want to risk it.  Finally, this week the weather has warmed up enough that I felt it was time to put the plants in.  Yesterday afternoon I tilled the old tomato bed and started planting.  The few extra days in the greenhouse really helped.  Most of the plants I put in already have flowers.  I’m just hoping that the temperatures stay warm at night so the flowers don’t drop.  We had a terrible early spring last year and tomatoes didn’t come until mid-late summer.  With any luck things will be better this year.