Report from a local nursery; vegetable garden

I'm ill, so doing light duty tasks this weekend.

I stopped by local nursery South Bay Gardens to pick up some tomato starts: Early Girl and Celebrity. I want to get a start with those, then move to harvest the ones I have from seed.

I was surprised to see that although the nursery had a fair number of different tomato plants, that there weren't many in terms of their total numbers. I also missed seeing many of the heirloom varieties that they had last year. When I mentioned this Alan behind the counter he commented that he just can't keep them in stock - tomatoes in general have been far more popular than last year and the heirloom varieties are more scarce from his supplier.

I've read elsewhere that people are re-focusing on vegetable gardens, so perhaps this is another piece of anecdotal evidence to support that idea.

At Alan's suggestion I picked up some Swiss Chard "BrightLights" seed. It had several things to recommend it, including being a beautiful, multicolored perennial. I haven't grown it before, though I have cooked with it.


My cauliflower have all bolted or look bad. I'm consoled by having recently read that it is the most picky of the cruciferous vegetables.

EDIT 20 Mar: Trey over at The Blogging Nurseryman speculates about a return to gardening, as the economy takes a dip. He thinks the simple pleasures and great vegetables from a home garden will be a trend in the coming year. Since he has many more years of experience than I, he's probably that much better a prognosticator.