Spring 2024

The Great Tomato Plant Sale Starts with a Single Seed!

by Liz Rottger

Well, actually, with more than 35,000 seeds! That’s how many plants the UC Master Gardeners of Contra Costa are propagating for their Great Tomato Plant Sale that will be held in 3 county areas (Walnut Creek, Antioch, and Richmond) this year. We will propagate 70+ varieties of hybrid and heirloom tomatoes, 35+ varieties of peppers, and 60+ varieties of other types of summer veggies, including eggplants, zucchini, pumpkins, winter squash, beans, and cucumbers. We offer several varieties rarely found in Contra Costa, all selected because they do well in our county’s many micro-climates. Detailed descriptions can be found on our website.

Each of these plants has been sown, potted up, and then carefully tended by UC Master Gardeners of Contra Costa County. The energy and drive to organize and produce the remarkable Great Tomato Plant Sale are generated by our passionate belief that backyard gardening is easy, satisfying, and inspiring. Growing a tomato plant or other summer veggie is a good way to make gardening an important part of your life.

We, Master Gardeners, start in February's cold and wet days. By the time we finally reach our sale days in April in the three regions of Contra Costa County, over one hundred Master Gardeners will have volunteered in many different ways to make the Great Tomato Plant Sale possible. As Master Gardeners, we have a shared goal—to create a stronger, more diverse, and more cohesive community of home gardeners in Contra Costa County. The funds raised by the Great Tomato Plant Sale help us achieve this goal by supporting our many outreach and community educational activities—demonstration gardens, school and community gardens, educational tables at farmers’ markets, a Library Speaker Series, webinars, and a Help Desk to answer your gardening questions.

We measure our sales’ success in every person we convince that growing tomatoes or summer veggies is something they can do, even if they garden on a patio, a postage-stamp backyard, or in windy, summer-overcast Richmond. The biggest reward is seeing the joy on people's faces as they cart off their tomato and veggie plants—some taking ten or twenty plants, but telling us happily, “There are always the neighbors!”