Spring Plant Sale – Apollo Beach Garden Club
Apollo Beach Garden Club and Community Forest Garden is hosting their 6th annual Spring Plant sale on Saturday, February 8th, 2025 from 8 am until 1 pm.  Â
This spring the focus is on providing all things edible to give everyone a great start to our favorite food growing season, Spring. Members have been working diligently on creating an expansive list of organic food plants to get everyone’s spring garden off to a great start and hope to wow with some carefully curated and nurtured plants that will be on offer for sale.   Â
For this sale, the garden club developed a well-rounded list of the most popular vegetables that will grow best in our climate to help take your growing season into summer (and felt ready to go large with it).  Garden club members started the seeds and with the help of volunteers on Tuesdays and Saturdays, have been able to create nearly 2,000 amazing plants that make food to have on offer for this sale. It took a lot of work and a lot of investment. The club purchased over 10 large bags of organic soil, two large bags of peat, two large bags of pearlite and 1,400 small pots & labels so they can bring their creations to market for you. Â
For tomatoes and lettuces, they focused on sourcing rare and heat tolerant varieties that are also disease resistant. Many heirloom tomatoes that we all love to grow are simply not disease resistant to yellow leaf curl virus, mosaic virus, nematodes, etc, which can be prolific in our growing area of Apollo Beach, Ruskin and Riverview, Florida. It is always heartbreaking to see an amazingly healthy, robust tomato plant go in the ground or a pot, take off, start flowering and then fail to continue and become productive due to the viruses or nematodes.   Â
Two different NEW tomato varieties the garden club sourced that will be on offer include the Mortgage Lifter VFN and the Tropic VFN. Both varieties produce quite large fruit, which can be difficult to achieve without splitting in our growing zone, and there is a unique story behind how the Mortgage Lifter came to be. They’d love to share the story with you at the plant sale! Both large fruit varieties are touted to be extremely heat tolerant and incredibly resistant to the common ailments in our area.  For tomatoes, there is going to be no one else who has the varieties that they will have available.  Â
Two additional tomato varieties that were sourced to provide on offer include a Japanese Black Trifele and an interesting little gem called a Garden Peach. Both the Black Trifele and the Garden Peach are more cherry or oversized cherry in size. The Black Trifele is black(ish) and the Garden Peach is, you guessed it, peach or yellow colored and is supposed to have the feel of a peach on the skin, but taste just like a tomato. If you want to keep the Mockingbirds and Squirrels from grabbing at your harvest before you can, plant different colors that don’t turn red. There will be the continued offerings of grand slam producers such as Sungold, Lebanon and more in the Tomato department. These will be rare, well cared for, well researched, healthy and vibrant plants with limited inventory on hand. For the best plant choices, prepare to show up early and be first in the gate with a wagon in tow. Garden club members and experts will be on hand to help answer questions and select the perfect plant for your needs. Â
For lettuces there will be several heat tolerant Romaine varieties, including a new one called Jericho which is supposed to be even more tolerant than the Queensland and a leaf lettuce gem called Cherokee.  For expanded greens they will have mustard greens, collard greens, longevity spinach, Malibar spinach, Red Malibar spinach, Tuscan Kale, Chinese cabbage, green cabbage and more. Â
There will be a unique selection of peppers, eggplants and many fruiting trees available that include Papaya, Moringa, Green Curry, Surinam Cherry, Mango, Banana, and Sugar Apple. There will be flowers, pollinator attractants, edible flowers and more. Â
In addition to cultivating a list of plants to have on offer for this sale, the Apollo Beach Garden Club reached out in a way to support our local community through the Manatee Detention Facility Horticulture Department. The garden club provided herb seeds, pots and soil. Through the horticulture program, inmates start the seeds and nursery them on to market size and quality and the club purchases them back at wholesale rates. The inmates learn a skill that can pay later and hopefully feel the same enjoyment when they see that first tiny pop of green through the soil top. The garden club is excited to see the results with a wide list of fresh culinary herbs on offer and is happy to help support our local corrections system. Inmates who care for plants in prison gardens can experience many benefits, including improved mental health, increased self-esteem, and a sense of purpose. The garden club is honored to help support this type of program and to have the center as a partner in growing.Â
This year, the Apollo Beach Garden Club made larger investments into the plant stock to have available and upped the ante. Despite Helene that put them under and Milton that sent trees over, they have rebounded with renewed vigor and excitement and new growth.  Regardless of the losses, Apollo Beach Garden Club is giving more for this plant sale and patrons get to take home the benefits of it for their own gardens.  Â
Contact Teresa via text or phone at 813 310 3204 with any questions.Â
Gate opens at 8 am. Â Â Â
Apollo Beach Garden Club and Community Forest GardenÂ
664 Golf and Sea BoulevardÂ
Apollo Beach, FLÂ
