How We Grow our Heirloom Vegetable Plants 

     

We start our earliest  seed-planting in January. Untreated seeds are sown into a mixture of mushroom compost and peat moss. The seeds are incubated in a very warm environment and moved into the greenhouse when sprouting has occured. There they are grown  in warm days and comparatively cool nights. The only fertilizer used is fish emulsion. In time the plants are shifted into four-packs and eventually into their individual 2.5 inch pots, where they establish themselves prior to shipping.

   

We like to give the plants two weeks or so in their final pots. This gives them time to establish fully without becoming too large to ship. (Our protective packaging allows a maximum height of about 11 inches.) We ship only actively growing plants with root systems that have just filled their pot; we never ship root-bound specimens that may have slowed their growth.      Plants are usually shipped directly from our greenhouse, with no "hardening-off" period prior to shipping. It is the customer's responsibilty to acclimatize the plants prior to setting out in the garden.