The plant sale committee is hard at work!
Snow day!
The Veggies and Herbs pages are both pretty much up to date now. Remember that all veggies and annual herbs will be priced at $4 this year. Start planning your vegetable garden now! Wish all our little seedlings luck.
Doesn’t that climbing aster look great even in the snow? Look for it on the Perennials page, which is coming along and close to showing what we will have in April. We are still in the process of procuring plants and nurturing seedlings. Some of our natives seedlings are really starting to pop; others are still a bit sleepy.
We’re just a month away from the Festival, and a month and a half from the sale!
Future sale plants snooze under a blanket of fresh snow. As long as they are hardy to zone 5 (oops now zone 6) they’ll be just fine - potted plants, especially those in smaller pots, need to be 2 zones hardier than our zone 8 to overwinter without protection.
Annuals and Tropicals Spotlight
It’s hard to believe that this little Gomphrena globosa ‘Fireworks’ seedling will grow up to be this vibrant spectacular plant on the right! Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ has a hot pink flower with yellow tips, hence its name. It is an annual plant that thrives in sunny, hot, dry conditions, so is perfect in the Master Gardener Container Demonstration Gardens at Cocoa Cinnamon. It is a spectacular yet tough plant that will grow 3 to 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide; a favorite of pollinators, and looks great in cut flower arrangements.
Another new one to check out is Red Malabar Spinach. This fast growing annual vine loves heat and sun, looks fantastic on a trellis or fence, and is edible to boot! Use it like spinach when regular spinach has faded in the heat of the summer.
Photos by Deborah Pilkington
Mid-February Update
We’ve been updating the Houseplants section and it should be fairly reflective of what will be offered at the sale. Have you ever tried growing a Pickle Plant, an African Spear, or a Night Blooming Cereus? Here’s your chance! We’ll also have some really nice begonias that can also be used as annual bedding plants, as well as several Monsteras (Split Leaf Philodendron), including the hard to find variegated ‘Albo.’
Don’t forget that 250 plants (or $8 coupons for a plant at the sale) will be given away at the Plant Festival March 22nd. A nice selection of our houseplants will be available as choices if you are one of the first 250 people to arrive.
January Update
It may just be January, but the plant sale team has been busy building the inventory for this year’s sale. The plant list will be finalized by March 20 and will be posted here after that time. In the meantime, peruse Our Plants to see what we have offered in the past since many will be on this year’s list as well.
Shout out to photographer Allie Mullin for the great photos from plant sale 2024!
About half our plants are started from seed, and about half are divided or propagated from our own Master Gardeners’ collections. While our seeds for 2025 have already been selected and many have been sown, if there are plants in particular you are looking for, drop us a line as we may be able to locate and share those plants, or at least consider them for the next sale. Master Gardeners love nothing more than to share their plants!
Veggies and Herbs
Breaking news! Prices for most annual veggies and herbs will return to $4 for 2025. That’s more bang for your buck. As always, our veggie team is super organized. They are excited to introduce some new selections this year, along with their many tried and true favorites.
Hot Peppers
Attention Indian food lovers! New this year are the Ramnad Mundu pepper with 30,000-50,000 Scoville Heat Units, and the Kanthari pepper, at a nice medium 50,000-100,000 SHU. These join a variety of peppers ranging from mild to fiery.
Tomatoes
Tomato fans should check out Black Krim, an old favorite heirloom slicer; Marmalade Skies, an earlier and more prolific tomato that will replace Chef’s Choice Orange; Sweet Prince, developed at the NC State University Plant Breeding Consortium and many more.
Sweet Peppers
We listened when you asked for more sweet peppers. Look for both red and yellow lunchbox peppers, three colors of bell peppers as well as Carmen and Escamillo, red and yellow Corno di Toro varieties.
Eggplant
The Black Beauty eggplant will return this year with the other favorites from last year: Ping Tung, Listada DeGandia, Qi Ye Round and Casper.
Perennials
Bring on the natives!
We are hearing the call to plant more native species that produce habitats friendly to our local bird and insect populations, and continue to expand our seed-grown and locally sourced divisions of native plants. Curious about natives versus nativars? Check out this post to learn more.
Our propagation teams are learning about the importance of ecotypes in growing native plants. We are working to establish local native plant populations from which we can source our seeds that we grow for the sales, so the plants you get will be optimally adapted for this area. While we continue to dig and divide from local plant populations - generally producing a more mature plant - starting from seed increases genetic diversity and minimizes the risk of transferring unintended species, such as weed seeds, along with the plant.
Many native favorites are already potted, collected or growing, such as wild ginger, coral honeysuckle, sundrops, butterfly or orange milkweed, Jack in the Pulpit and purple verbena. A couple of new selections that we’ll have are long-headed coneflower and climbing aster.
We are starting a lot of natives from seed, and are hopeful they will all be ready for you! Check out our final list after March 20. We hope to have some great pollinator plants - coneflower, rattlesnake master, cardinal flower, several lobelias, bee balms, and several of the tough as nails goldenrods. The team is trying a few new and potentially challenging seeds, but with any luck you may see blanket flower, meadow beauty, helmet flower, boneset, wild quinine, Maryland golden aster and perhaps Piedmont Barbara’s buttons. We are excited to see what grows!
Old Favorites
We haven’t forgotten the non-native favorites. Many are easy to grow, beautiful, evergreen, deer resistant, drought tolerant or great pollinator plants - reason enough to choose them. Look for, among many others, black and blue sage, lambs ears, catmint, sedum, hardy begonia, canna, sedge, Russian sage and creeping rosemary.
One of a Kinds
Our propagation team lives up to its name - they will attempt to divide anything! As a result, we can offer quite a few unique plants in small quantities. Many are simply favorite plants; others are special selections from local nurseries such as Plant Delights that may not be well known. Some examples include several named agaves, crinum, cyclamen, lilies, gloxinia, hardy ginger and yew. If these unique plants interest you, be sure to check out our final inventory in late March so you can read up on them and look for them in the sale.
Trees and Shrubs
There will be a selection of both native and non-native trees and shrubs. We like to price our plants competitively, sell propagated plants within a year or two, and maintain healthy root systems for dug or divided plants. For these reasons our trees and shrubs may be smaller than what you would find at other nurseries or big box stores. Experienced gardeners know that these affordable plants settle in quickly and may catch up to their larger counterparts in just a few years.
Natives
Look for Florida anise tree, red twig dogwood, Sweet Betsy, pawpaw, redbud, red mulberry, yellow buckeye, elderberry, oakleaf hydrangea, sweet pepperbush, beautyberry and shrubby St. John’s wort.
Non-natives
Look for fig varieties, gardenia, hydrangea, lilac, lantana, winter hazel, smoke tree, paperbush and variegated false holly.
Check back for a complete listing!
Houseplants
Our small but dedicated houseplants team is bringing together a solid selection of quality houseplants, many of which come along with an interesting pot. They’ve got many well recognized plants, such as pothos, African violets, Thanksgiving cactus, diminutive snake plants, Swedish ivy, cute polkadot plants, several lovely begonia types, and the much coveted monstera.
In addition, they are excited to offer some more unusual or unique varieties, including night blooming cereus, silverleaf philodendron, mother of thousands, crown of thorns, and a beautiful deeply cut philodendron.
Annuals and Tropicals
We are hoping to bring you coleus, gomphrena, begonias (look in the houseplants section) and black-eyed Susan vine. Check back for updates!
