Vicki’s seedling sale

Pre-orders and contactless pick-up feature this year

One of the true indicators that spring has arrived in the County is Vicki’s Veggies’ heirloom tomato seedling sale. Typically, the Victoria Day weekend would bring hundreds of people to Vicki Emlaw’s farm stand and greenhouses on Morrison Point Road to browse and select from the over 270 different varieties of tomatoes. But the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a change in Vicki’s operation. This year, customers pre-ordered the varieties they wanted and then drove through the farm stand where members of Vicki’s team—friends and family recruited for the weekend—loaded trays of seedlings into car trunks or onto pick-up truck beds to avoid direct contact with the buyers. Most paid in advance through e-transfer, and a bank card reader attached to a hockey stick ensured maintenance of physical distancing for those who paid on the spot. Vicki said that there were nearly 10 times as many pre-orders as last year, but she was unsure of exactly how many, since she has spent the majority of her time in the greenhouse preparing the seedlings. “I don’t know how many orders I have. My sister, because she’s off work right now, has become my secretary, and she is so good at organizing my life. I love it. I’ve been wanting this to happen for a long time,” she said. “There are over 80 pages of orders, all handwritten because they come in through Facebook, Instagram, text or email. Yesterday my sister [Aynsley] spent six hours answering people’s questions. I couldn’t have done that because I wouldn’t have any time.”

Vicki Emlaw holds trays of tomato seedlings ready for customer pick-up.

Vicki follows a biodynamic calendar for planting, and this year the ideal time for tomatoes was two days at the beginning of April. With the help of her mother, Sandra, and her daughter, Sage, she sowed over 7,000 seeds during those two days. “Last year I sold between two and three thousand tomato seedlings, and this year I was running out of pots so I bought 5,000 new ones. I’ve used all the pots and now I’m looking for more. I bought 5,000 tags and all the tags are gone, so I’m reusing old ones where I had to cross the names out and write on them again.” She has over 270 different varieties this year, adding at least 50 new ones from her heirloom seed supplier in Iowa. This year, she intends to save more of her own seeds, so that she will have her own supply for planting next year, and also to be able to offer them for sale. She is also embarking on a new project this year, helped in part by a bursary of $500 from the County Sustainability Group. She will offer classes on how to save seeds, how to sow them, how to transplant seedlings, and how to grow tomatoes on trellises.

The excitement in Vicki’s voice is obvious when she speaks about heirloom tomatoes. “I’ve been captivated by heirloom tomatoes since the first time I saw the fruit grow. That was in the year 2000 and I had eight different varieties, and they were all so beautiful and so different. I didn’t actually like tomatoes before that, and just the beauty of the colour and all the different shapes and sizes made me really want to taste them,” she said.

That’s something that really spurred my interest in wanting to continue to grow good food. It’s in the diversity and the anticipation of beautiful tastes.” Her tomatoes have fanciful names such as Sunrise Bumblebee, Dancing With Smurfs or Sweet Aperitif, and they come in colours ranging from white to purple to blue to orange. There are even a few red ones. “I grow red tomatoes because I know some people only eat the red ones. My dad was never capable of eating anything other than a red tomato,” she said. “I’ve got this new green variety this year that tastes so great. It’s a rogue off my Café Brûlée, and it’s a little green pear-shaped tomato. I saved the seeds and I’m calling it Vicki’s Green Brûlée. It’s a very special flavour and I want people to experience that.”

Vicki will have tomato seedlings for sale at her farm stand on Morrison Point Road for the next couple of weeks. She has also been planting vegetables in her market garden, including her now infamous carrots. The cooler weather has meant a slow start to the season, but it did not prevent Vicki from celebrating World Naked Gardening Day in the appropriate manner, as her followers on Instagram know.