Organic plant sale at UC Santa Cruz kicks off fall gardening season

It's time to plant fall and winter vegetables, annual flowers, and landscape plants to keep fresh, home-grown veggies and flowers on the table and give perennials a chance to put down roots.

To get your fall garden off to a great start, the UCSC Farm & Garden’s Fall Plant Sale will offer a rich and timely selection of organically raised vegetable seedlings, perennials, and California natives. The sale will take place Friday and Saturday, September 6 and 7. The sale will be open from noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, in the Barn Theater parking lot at the intersection of Bay and High streets in Santa Cruz at the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus.

This year’s vegetable offerings include peas, spinach, kale, chard, lettuce and salad mixes, collards, fennel, and leeks, along with broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Napa cabbage. There will also be a good selection of fall- and winter-flowering annuals, including sweet peas, bachelor’s button, statice, calendula, scabiosa, and stock

Featured this year is an expanded selection of Asian greens, including baby bok choi, tat soi, and joi choi, as well as a range of radicchio varieties, four types of artichokes, and an abundance of alliums, including chives, scallions, shallots, and leeks.

For a full list of plants being offered see http://casfs.ucsc.edu/fallsale2013

The Farm & Garden’s Fall Plant Sale is one of the largest all-organic events of its kind in the Monterey Bay Area. All of the flower and vegetable starts were propagated using organic methods. No chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides were used in growing the plants from seed and cuttings.

In addition to winter vegetables, annual flowers and culinary herbs, the sale will feature perennial flowers and shrubs, including lavenders, ornamental thistles and a wide selection of salvias. Autumn is also a great time to plant California native species. Available this year will be coyote bush, fescues, and several Ribes varieties.

Receipts from the Fall Plant Sale presented at Companion Bakeshop the week following the sale will also earn shoppers a 10 percent discount on any purchase.

The sale is sponsored by the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, and will benefit the UCSC Farm & Garden Apprenticeship, a six-month training course in organic farming and gardening. Members of the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden receive a 10 percent discount on purchases; memberships will be available at the sale. For more information about the Fall Plant Sale or the Friends of the Farm & Garden, call (831) 459-3240, send email to casfs@ucsc.edu, or see http://casfs.ucsc.edu. The sale takes place rain or shine.