The Rusty Hoe: Vegetable Plants

We Know great vegetable plants because WE GARDEN TOO!

(Scroll DOWN For A Complete List of Available Plants)

At the Rusty Hoe, we use only non-GMO seed stock, and whenever available, we try to choose organically produced seed.

Have you ever saw a garden in Arkansas that didn’t have pebbles, rocks, roots and other organic debris, clay, and goodness knows what else scattered about? Bottom line is that unless you are planting in store-bought potting mix, your garden soil will be full of potential “resistance” for seedlings and roots to push their way through. We use a sterile potting medium to avoid bacteria and disease, but unlike other commercial growers, we use a carefully selected blend of natural hard wood forest products, limestone sand, perlite, and sphagnum peat moss. The natural forest products are ground in a manner that provides resistance for the emerging seedling and root stock as well as natural aeration. This rougher medium produces only the strongest seedlings! This rougher medium also promotes more natural root growth.

Our plants begin their journey to your garden here - in the "germination station". All the seeds are planted and the temperature is kept at a steady 45 degrees. We don't use heating pads to artificially germinate the seeds. We only warm the seeding area to the optimum ground temperature for planting. This is the same ambient temperature in which we'll move them outside.

We begin our seeding process in the "germination station" at the end of December.

Once the seeds germinate, we begin the transplanting process. This is carefully done by hand, one tiny seedling at a time. This prevents the seedlings from becoming "leggy" or weak as they grow in height, and encourages strong root systems. You may have watched Violet and I doing this with a #2 Ticonderoga pencil! Violet developed this technique over 40 years ago, and we still use it to this day. So, if you've seen anyone else doing it - they likely learned from her!

We have no set watering pattern that our plants can adjust to – just as there is no set pattern of rain with Mother Nature. We do not use sprinklers or automatic systems on timers. All of our plants are watered by hand only when/if they are in need – and not until that need is obvious (wilting, etc.). Our plants grow with a much stronger ability to withstand drought than plants that have spent their entire lives being watered on a schedule. As gardeners ourselves, we know that no one can afford to water their entire garden every day – even if they had the time. We produce plants that have fully acclimated to the unpredictability of nature – not plants that have grown dependent upon an automatic watering system.

We inoculate all of our vegetable plants to the ambient conditions where they will be growing prior to selling them. Our vegetable plants are moved outside as soon as the daytime high reaches 45 degrees for one week, and they remain outside until sold. The only amend we afford them is the same that you, the gardener, would... in the event of frost/hail, we cover them. Otherwise, they experience all that nature throws at them just as they would planted in your garden. Generally (weather permitting), we have all of our cold crop vegetable plants ready for sale by March.