Pondering Pepper Plants

Finding USDA Certified Organic plants for your home garden is a challenge here in Potter County. Our plants are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or fertilizers. Any nonorganic nursery plant is sure to have been treated with some type of synthetic product. Remember USDA has exacting standards that must be met for a plant to bear the USDA Certified Organic label and we undergo an annual review to be able to use the USDA Certified Organic "brand."

All of our plants (all grown from certified organic seed) get the best possible start with high-quality organic seed starting mix, potting soil and care.

At this time, I am completing the seeding of pepper and tomato plants. I am growing an assortment of plants for the farm but and have not planned to start any additional plants for sale this year unless the customer makes arrangements with me NOW. (Thank you to those who have responded and ordered their plants).

As promised, here is a list of available sweet and hot pepper seeds I have:

Sweet Peppers: Chocolate, Golden California Wonder, King of the North, Carolina Wonder, Osmarsko Kambe
Hot Peppers: Sarit Gat, Czech Black, Hidalgo, Ring Of Fire

Tomato varieties are here.

Interested? Send an email to metzgerfarm@gmail.com before WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 or we'll both be disappointed.

Last Call For Tomato Plants

I've been occupied with getting my pepper, onion and tomato plants going in the past couple of days. If you are interested in ordering Certified Organic tomato and/or pepper plants, your deadline has arrived. I have used all of the seed starting mix that I ordered. I have ordered an additional bag to complete my seeding projects but I will not be planting extra seeds this year so if you are going to want plants for your home garden in May, I need to have your order NOW.

Healthy organic tomato plant from a long-ago summer

I have seed for the following determinate tomato varieties: Rutgers, Oregon Spring, Northern Ruby Paste, Mountain Princess, Burbank, Organic 506, Glacier, Sophie's Choice, Medford, Wisconsin Chief and Silvery Fir Tree.

Is anything more appealing than a vine-ripened organic tomato?

Indeterminate varieties require staking or trellising. Available seeds include: Black Sea Man, Black Cherry, Cerokee Purple, Goldie, Stupice, Dester, Brandywine, Pruden's Purple, Moskvich, New Girl.

 

Price per plant (in 4-inch peat pot) will be $4 each. 

Again, if you are interested in plants this year, I need to hear from you by Monday, March 25. Please email metzgerfarm@gmail.com.

... and thank you to those who have already ordered. Your seeds are working at sprouting in the sprouting chambers in the greenhouse as I share this post!

Tomato Nostalgia

Summer of 1979
.

We arrived on the family farm on Crandall Hill on a hot April day in 1976,  our "Living The Good Life" dreams of making our way as homesteaders packed into a U-Haul truck, taking us from the busy Lehigh Valley back to our mutual roots in north central Pennsylvania.
Key to the back-to-the-land dream was growing a big garden. In the metropolitan area near Allentown, we had claimed a community garden space with high voltage electrical lines arching overhead. The weeds soon overtook our first efforts at growing our own as we couldn't find the time to adequately tend our little shared space. But our move back to the gardens Arthur fondly remembered  from his childhood offered a new start and we planted our first garden that spring.
I don't remember much about those first gardens. Instead, my memories take me back to sunny summer afternoons in the tomato patch while my toddler daughter took her afternoon nap in the nearby house.  Always a creature of habit, the little girl welcomed her afternoon respite, and so did I. It was the summer I canned more than 100 quarts of our own tomatoes.
Coming across this photo on a cold winter day in 2019 transported me back to that halcyon summer, setting my standard of tomato success.
It's time to start the seeds that will become the tomatoes of 2019. For the past several years, I have offered USDA Certified Organic tomato and pepper plants for sale. This year I will grow vegetable starts only if customers make arrangements with me in advance. And that means you will need to get in touch with me (email: metzgerfarm@gmail.com) before March 20 to place your order. We can work together to select varieties and plan for the best time for you to take custody of your plants when the danger of frost has passed in your garden patch. We'll both be disappointed if you wait until May to begin looking for organic plant starts.