Gentry offers gardeners great local options

If you were wondering where to buy vegetable plants for your spring garden, don't overlook the local options. Bever's Ace Hardware and Sleepy Hollow Store both offer plants for spring gardens.

At Bever's Ace Hardware, Randy and crew have set up a nice greenhouse on the west side of the store that has some of the best-looking plants I have seen anywhere. There are a number of choices among both flowers and vegetable plants.

I don't know how many varieties of tomato plants Bever's offers, but I did note that you could choose from Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Rutgers, Old German, Arkansas Traveler, Bradley Pink, Whopper and Amish Paste, as well as many others. And that is just the tomatoes.

There are also many varieties of hot peppers, including Poblano, Ghost, Anaheim, Red Chili, Serrano, Habanero, Jalapeno and Hot Banana, plus sweet bell peppers such as Red Beauty, Lilac, Valencia Orange, Golden Bell and Big Bertha.

I also saw Napa Cabbage, Chinese Broccoli, everbearing strawberries, a couple of squash varieties and burpless cucumbers.

Bever's also offers several different bark mulches and rocks for gardens and driveways, including river rock, pea gravel, lava, marble chips and paver base. And, you can find a variety of soil amendments and sprays to control insects and weeds at Bever's.

About this time every spring, Sleepy Hollow Store has racks and racks of beautiful flowers and vegetable plants on display in front of the store. The store offers a good selection of plants for the home garden, as well as onion sets and seed potatoes. In the back room, which is cooled, there are bunches of Super Star, Texas Sweet and Walla Walla onions.

This year, Sleepy Hollow is offering a number of organic vegetables, including such tomato varieties as Indigo Rose, Green Zebra, Japanese Black Trifele, Clementine, Peacevine and Lucky Tiger. The store also offers a line of organic pepper plants.

Sleepy Hollow has an amazing variety of flowers, including such favorites as daisies, dahlias, impatiens, geraniums, lantanas, clematis, lobelias, purslane, peonies, petunias, marigolds, dianthus and ferns. The store has many hanging baskets of various flowers.

And, inside the store, there are many seeds if growing from seed is your thing. Sleepy Hollow has almost any kind of vegetable seed you could ask for. And the seeds are very reasonably priced.

At Sleepy Hollow you can also find many herbs for your garden. There are fennel, chives, apple mint, lemon balm, spearmint, parsley, garden sage, pesto basil and sweet basil. These herbs will do well in your garden and in your cooking.

So if you are thinking about planting a garden, be sure to check out the local options at Bever's Hardware and the Sleepy Hollow Store. They have the Gentry area covered when it comes to garden plants and supplies.

Sam Byrnes is a Gentry-area resident and weekly contributor to the Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 04/06/2016