More Tomatoes!

We're bringing more varieties of tomatoes out of the greenhouse this week. In addition to the list from last week, here's what you will find.

• Black Cherry
• Black Krim
• Brandywine
• Cream Sausage
• Gold Nugget
• Red Alert
• Red Zebra
• San Marzano
• Sweetie

Remember that we have lots of vegetable starts in addition to tomatoes. We have greens, cucumbers, garlic and several kinds of peppers will soon be ready to come out of the greenhouse. We also have herbs and a good selection of berries.

A Virtual Tour of our Facilities

If you have been to our Garden Center, you know there's a lot more here than a retail nursery. If you haven't, we'd like to take this opportunity to show you around.

Puget Ridge Garden Center is one of the educational facilities for the Landscape Horticulture program here at SSCC. As we've described in the sidebar, the garden center gives students hands-on experience with the tasks involved in a retail business.

Along with that, we teach classes in propagation and greenhouse management. Here students learn to produce most of the plant material sold in the garden center.

Many plants, like tomatoes, peppers and basil, are started from seed. Trays are filled with starter soil and seeds are sown into it. Seeds that need extra heat in order to germinate are placed in a sort of incubator "tent," as you see above, with translucent plastic above and a heating pad under the plant trays. When the seedlings have sprouted and grown a bit, students take the trays from the greenhouse to the adjacent "head house," (see below) where the tedious job of transplanting those tiny seedlings into individual pots takes place.

Once they are potted up, the plants return to the greenhouse to grow to a salable size. Here are basil plants in the greenhouse, close to being ready.

Some plants, such as woody shrubs, are propagated by way of cuttings. Others, such as perennials, are propagated by division. All go through a process of growing on in the greenhouse. When plants have reached the right size for sale, it's time to move them to the cold frame (below) so they can "harden off."

The hardening off process involves acclimating plants so that they can survive the cold, wind and direct sun outdoors. The cold frame is unheated, yet protected from the harshest of the elements, providing comfortable transition housing. Once that process is complete, the plants are moved out into the display area.

Students also propagate all of the house plants sold at the garden center. Above you see a healthy grouping of succulents. And below, a stunning orchid.

It's Time for Tomatoes!

We had good intentions this year. We were going to start FEWER varieties of tomatoes. Well, you know what they say about good intentions... A few of the 35+ varieties are available for you this week. Here you can see part of the collection in our greenhouse.

• Tomatoes can be planted out when night time temperatures are in the high 40s and we are there most of the time now. However, the daytime temperatures are still cool for these heat lovers. So you can plant them outside, but they will sit until it starts to warm up into the high 60s during the day.
• When planting, drop tomatoes down deep into the soil. Unlike most plants, the fine hairs on the stems will turn into new roots. (They truly are weeds.)
• Our tomatoes already have flowers set and are in 5-1/2" square containers. They are $4.69 each.
• We have selected varieties that do well in our cool climate.

Varieties available this week: 'Sungold,' 'Silver Fir Tree,' 'Siberian,' 'Japanese Black Trifele,' 'San Marzano,' 'Shady Lady,' 'Oregon Spring,' 'Legend,' 'Fox,' and 'Stupice.' If there is a particular variety you are looking for, ask us, we might have it.

Sale Plants of the Week
All indoor plants are 30% off. We have a smart collection of easy care plants for indoors. This includes many succulents that require only a sunny window and infrequent watering.