Vegetables and Herbs   

New veggie starts are now available for your organic garden. This is a great time to plant nearly all your summer growing vegetables: leafy greens (spinach, lettuce, romaine, kale, chard, and others), peas (get 'em going soon)broccoli, beets, beans, arugula, fennel, artichokes, onions, beets and much more.

Vegetables for Planting

Great eating begins with great ingredients and we have what it takes to help you grow the best of all you can in this wonderfully productive climate. From our home garden as well as our P-Patch, we harvest great tasting lettuces and romaine along with Walla Walla sweet onions.  Last year we picked peas from late April through June, and in late July we started getting the real prize: fresh tasty tomatoes.  Some of our tomatoes were planted in early April with the help of the Season Extender aka Wall-of-Water, and those plants were the first to produce ripe fruit.  The 12 tomato plants we had at the P Patch probably produced between 50 to 75 pounds of ripe fruit last year!  This provided us with lots of frozen tomato sauce filling up our freezer to eat until the next harvest.

Don't forget to Fertilize!

Its been estimated that food crop yields increase by between 40 to 60% by the judicious use of fertilizers!  Some think that "all natural" means preparing a garden using only great compost (like our Gardener and Bloome Bumper Crop - it contains 15% chicken manure, bat guano, worm castings and other good stuff for your vegetable growing needs) alone and then planting organic seeds or organic vegetable starts and then waiting for a great harvest. 

But by using the proper fertilizer at the appropriate time not only helps increase your crop size, gives you greater yield and also helps the plants' ability to fend off insects and disease.  To insure the best harvests apply a mild organic granular fertilizer like Dr. Earth or EB Stone when planting and then add liquid organic fertilizers during the growing season.  We have several very good liquid fertilizers specifically designed for food crops available for you to increase your harvest this season - Dr. Earth liquid concentrate, Mega Green Organic fertilizer concentrate and Alaska Fish Feritlizer. If you have any questions, nearly all of our friendly staff grow their own food crops and can give you great advice when needed.

Partial list of 2013 Vegetables (as available):

Artichoke - Imperial Star

Arugula

Beans - Blue Lake Pole, Royal Burgandy Bush

Beets - Golden, Red, Detroit Red, Chioggia, Shiraz Tall Top

Cauliflower - Snowball, Cheddar

Celery - Tango

Chard - Swiss

Collards - Champion

Corn - Jubilee

Cucumber - Marketmore

Eggplant - Imperial Black Beauty

Kale - Red Russian, Dinosaur

Kohlrabi - Kolibri

Lettuce - Allstar Gourmet Mix, Buttercrunch, Freckles, Marvel of Four Seasons, Mottistone, Pic 714, Red Romaine, Red Sails, Rouge D'Hiver, Salad Greens, Spicy Mesclun Mix.

Peppers - California Wonder, Charleston Hot, North Star.

Pumpkin - Baby Pam

Squash - Acorn, Delicata, Yellow Crookneck, Yellow Scallopini.

Tomatoes - See list

Zucchini - Black Beauty

Italicized veggies coming soon.

All About Tomatoes - Click here for information on all of our Tomato varieties.

Herbs

You can find lots of herbs for planting out in the herb garden or even for growing indoors for kitchen harvest use.  In season we carry basil, chives, cilantro/coriander, fennel, mints, parsley, oregano, sage, savory, stevia, thymes, lemon verbena, tarragon and even bay.   These are all grown organically to be used in cooking so you can feel safe in their quality.

Mint: one of the most useful herbs known to man, the menthol (and carvone in the case of the spearmints) is probably used by all human cultures for a wide variety of purposes.  Some of the more obvious include teas, flavorings (toothpaste, mouthwash, etc.), and ointments, but many also like to enjoy the flavor in cooling beverages.  One of the most popular of late is the Mojito.  These drinks call for spearmint leaves.  Some recommend the use of a particular spearmint: Kentucky Colonel Mint - a hybrid between apple mint and spearmint that was bred specifically for another drink, the Mint Julep!

Home Grown Mojitos

Summer is the time to harvest some of that mint you are growing in the herb garden and make some great tasting Mojitos.  In case you haven't got any mint going yet we've got lots of it ready to plant.  And in case you don't know how to make mojitos here are a few recipes to get you started: 1.) Traditional Mojito 2.) The Best Ever (traditional version)  3.) The Best Ever (with some added twists)  4.) Dos and Don'ts

Partial list of 2012 Herbs:

Basil - Genovese, Red Rubin, Sweet & Thai

Catnip

Chamomile - German

Cilantro

Chervil

Chives

Dill

Fennel - Sweet Fennel

French Sorrel

Lavender - Anouk, Fat Spike, Fred Boutin & Hidcote

Lemongrass

Lemon Balm

Lemon Verbena

Mint -  Peppermint, Spearmint, Strawberry Mint

Oregano - Greek, Hopley's Purple Oregano, Italian

Parsley - Curly & flat leaf

Rosemary - Arp, Creeping & Tuscan Blue

Sage - Berggarten, Golden Leaf, Pineapple, Purple & Tricolor

Stevia

Tarragon - French

Thyme - English, Lime

Free Burlap for P-Patch Users

Currently out of stock.

Magnolia Garden Center currently has burlap bags previously used for coffee or chocolate beans.  These make a good mulch for the winter garden that is lying fallow.  If you could use some in your P-Patch please come by with your P-Patch card and we'll see that you get some burlap!