WHO KNEW It Would Be Difficult to Buy Pesticide-Free Plants for Your Garden This Summer?

It’s not too difficult to find organic starts for your vegetable garden for produce that we consume. But for plants, shrubs and trees it’s more difficult.

Cedar Circle Farm, East Thetford, VT is Certified Organic for their vegetable starts and flowers.

Gardener’s Supply, Lebanon, NH, does sell vegetable starts that are tagged organic. Native and non-native plants, shrubs and trees will be tagged if they are organic. Gardener’s Supply buys from many sources. Being certified organic is expensive so not all suppliers will identify themselves as such. Read the tags to see if they have avoided harmful pesticides.

Honey Field Farm, Norwich, VT, is Certified Organic for their vegetable starts and flowers.

NH State Forest Nursery, Boscawen, NH, is a convenient on-line source for tree seedlings. They start with seeds collected from native NH trees and sell more than 50 bare-root seedling species using no harmful pesticides. You can go to their website to see what is still in stock from sales that began in December and run through May: https://www.nh.gov/nhnursery/ The seedlings are small but the prices are very reasonable.

Walmart, W. Lebanon, NH, has a 2025 goal of selling all plants free of neonicotinoids, flupyradifurone and sulfoxaflor. They plan to tag all their pollinator-friendly plants. And they plan to avoid selling invasive plant species. Their website examines the “what” and “why” of their sustainability goals for all their products. It will be interesting to see if they meet their goals. https://www.walmartsustainabilityhub.com/sustainable-products .

It’s important to look for plants for your garden that will benefit the local bees, insects and birds, providing them with food, shelter and nesting sites. But if plants come with harmful pesticides, they might look pretty but will not benefit our ecosystem.