Simple Gifts

I have been drying orange slices and making all sorts of simple holiday decorations this past week. It is a fun and uplifting way to get into the holiday spirit or to honor the return of the light at solstice.

Hello and warm wishes from all of us at Red Wagon. I just wanted to pop in and give you a little reminder that this coming Friday, December 17th, will be our last order pick up for any purchases you make in our online store. If you would like any gifts for the gardener or the cook on your list, or you want to treat yourself to a little something, here is your chance!

Our suggestions:

Our cute new gift packs of herb salts are the perfect hostess gift, all ready to go. You can find those here. Each package is lovingly packed and dressed up with a cotton ribbon and includes a wooden miniature salt cellar and salt spoon.

How cute is this?

This sickle weeder is easily everyone’s favorite hand tool at Red Wagon Plants. I never step into the garden without it if there is weeding to do.

The Hori Hori knife is also a staple in my garden tool box. It is so handy for making a planting hole, digging out tough roots, or cutting back fibrous stems.

While this won’t win “Most Romantic Gift”, we think that any serious houseplant owner would be thrilled to receive a bag of potting soil or Compost Plus made by our friends at VT Compost Company.

And these gardening gloves are a sweet little gift that will fit into a stocking or parcel just fine. They are another favorite of mine that I stash in my tool box, car, and garden shed. You never know when you might want to get your hands in dirt!

Finally, thank you for making 2021 another amazing season for us. We are excited for our future with you, and have lots of new developments that we will be sharing soon. Your love of plants, nature, and people is what fuels us.

With love from our gardens to yours,

Julie and the crew

Sweet Potato Time Has Come

Starting today, we have sweet potato slips available for sale in our online store for next day curbside pick up. They are sold 3 slips to a pot, and each slip turns into a plant that produces 5 to 10 pounds of sweet potatoes. Harvesting them in the fall is so fun, and you will feel like a gardening champion. Please note that the slips must be kept well watered at planting time for the first couple of weeks. Daily soakings will ensure the growth of healthy plants. When you buy 6 plants, we will throw in a 7th for free.

This is the 12th year of our fundraising partnership with the Vermont Community Garden Network - that is a lot of sweet potatoes grown over the years in support of the educational and food security programming throughout the state. We love this organization and the work it does to make gardening accessible to all.

Sweet potatoes are fun to grow and are a nutrient dense food that stores well through the winter. They are not grown like “Irish” potatoes (which actually come from Peru), and they are not even related. Sweet potatoes originate from South America and they are in the morning glory family. They grow as a long vine along the ground and produce large, orange sweet potatoes just below the surface of the soil. They can also be trained to climb up a trellis, and they can even be grown in containers. In 2009, Starksboro customers shared their very interesting container method via a photo album, which you can view here.

The organic slips come from Jones  Family Farms in Bailey, North Carolina, and are approved for use in certified organic production by Vermont Organic Farmers, LLC.

Planting Instructions

Sweet potatoes are grown from slips, which are cuttings from a parent vine. The slips grow best in a loose, sandy or silty soil that drains well. If they are grown in a rich dark soil they may discolor but are still good to eat.

Transplant the slips into garden beds during June, once nighttime temperatures are consistently above 50 degrees. Transplant in the late afternoon or on an overcast day. Lay the slips on their sides with 2/3 of the slip buried a half inch under the soil. Water enough to keep the soil moist, for the first couple of weeks.

Plant the slips 10 to 18 inches apart in rows that are two to three feet apart. The rows or raised bed should be elevated 4 to 8 inches above the ground level to allow the sweet potatoes room to form.

Keep the cuttings watered while they are getting established. The leaves that were originally on the planted slips will dry up and fall off leaving just the vine stem. New leaves will emerge from the cuttings as the slips become established.  Hoe around the vines to cultivate weeds and mulch with straw if desired. The sweet potato vines will cover the ground reaching 5 to 10 feet in length.

Pest Control – Deer love sweet potato leaves, so be sure your planting area is fenced if deer are a problem. A flying gold colored beetle may chew round holes in the leaves. The vines are tough and will keep growing despite insect damage.

Harvesting – Sweet potatoes are dug and harvested in late September through mid October, a day or two before the first predicted frost. Most of the sweet potatoes will be just below the parent plant. Each plant can produce up to six sweet potatoes.

Curing and Storing – After harvesting, dry the sweet potatoes on the ground for two or three hours. Allow them another 10 to 14 days to cure at room temperature or above, before storing the sweet potatoes at a temperature between 50 and 60 degrees F.

Unlike potatoes, sweet potatoes should not be kept cold in a garage, refrigerator or outbuilding. If properly cured and stored, they will keep until April. Enjoy!

Plant Updates, Tomato Workshop Take 2, and Thank You!

I woke up this morning with the garden on my mind. I have been watching our back yard open up this season and feel its energy, ready to burst a little more with the dawn of each new day. As we enter the third year of our meadow-style home garden, I have noticed a huge increase in the birds that come to our feeders and generally treat the back yard as their banquet. A flock of Carolina wrens came through last week and hopped through the garden foraging for whatever goodies it is they like, and every morning our resident lady Cardinal swoops in and sits on the branch of the mulberry tree right outside the window, showing off, all shy and coy. It is such a show.

As the weather warms up, many of you are thinking about tomatoes. The tomato webinar I hosted last week was sold out with a huge request for more, so I am going to do it a second time this Thursday at 5:30. Here is the correct link to sign up if you are interested. And today at noon, I will do a Facebook Live video walking through our tomato, eggplant and pepper greenhouse. You can join me for a look behind the scenes and hear about all the different varieties we are growing. And you can find them here too.

French marigolds have crested, double flowers in rich oranges, reds, yellows, and bronze. A summer staple in the garden.

Here are some other plants newly up on the website:

Marigolds, Sweet Corn 6-packs, Tasty Jade cucumbers, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes are some of our summer favorites.

Flower Power Bundles - annual flower plants to make a cutting garden or mix into flower beds. We have included 9 of our favorite varieties in this bundle, and there are 2 plants or more in each pot.

Basil Bundles - a collection of Sweet Genovese Basil, along with our specialty basils like pistou, purple, thai and lemon for the herb lover and pesto maker.

Our potting soil is back in stock for filling your planters and window boxes, along with watering wands and many other helpful tools that we were sold out of earlier in the week. It is been a challenge to keep things in stock with all of the eager gardeners out there these days!

Thanks so much for all of your support this season. It has been just incredible, and our Red Wagon team has done the best job to adjust and shift. I feel very proud of all of us working together to make gardening work for our community. You generous contributions to our Grow it Forward program (you have raised over $600 so far) are being used to fill gardens at housing sites in Chittenden County and Addison County in partnership with VT Community Garden Network and Housing Vermont. We are also working with Champlain Housing Trust and Food Not Bombs to bring big, potted cherry tomatoes to people who don’t have access to gardens. All of this makes us smile, and feels incredibly rewarding. Thank you.

Enjoy the garden,

Julie and the crew

Stay Home - We are Coming to You!

While you won’t be able to stroll through the greenhouses this spring, we will do our best to bring the show to the comfort of your home and yard.

Here is the good news:

• We're transitioning to online and phone ordering + pickup and home delivery - stay tuned for updates soon.

• We'll miss you in our greenhouses this spring (they are closed to the public) but we'll see you online (follow us on Instagram and Facebook).

• Join us for our first greenhouse tour - this Saturday at 10  AM on Facebook. We will post it to our Instagram stories too.

Please stay home. Shelter. Refuge. Nest. It is the right thing to do for our hospitals, medical professionals, essential workers, and the health of our community. While we are sad every single day for the state of the world, and for the fact that we won’t be able to see all of you enjoying the spring ritual of visiting our greenhouses, we feel confident that we can spread lots of joy with our new home delivery and curbside pick up service. Keep your eyes peeled for the online (and over the phone) ordering system we are creating .

Lily, April, Hope, Susan, Nora, Jayson, Chad, Kate and I will still be helping you with your plant selections and sharing garden advice and plant stories. We will be just a phone call or email away, and the online store (soon to come) will be full of photos and plant descriptions to help you with your plant lists. Our glove wearing and hand washing staff will pick your order, and have it ready on an assigned day and time, OR we will bring it right to your house. We will do all of this without any physical contact, but with the same warmth and abundance you have always enjoyed when visiting Red Wagon.

In the meantime, you can purchase seeds, houseplants and potting soil on our current website.

And mark your calendars for a virtual greenhouse tour this Saturday at 10 am. This will be in lieu of our annual Open House. I will personally take you on a tour of the greenhouses, and you can sit in your pajamas and cheer me on. I have never done this before. We are all doing things we have never done before, right?

Sending you good thoughts, garden dreams and love from our home to yours,

Julie