Suttons Bay Plant Masters Ready for 2021 Growing Season

Around this time last year, while people were at home, some turned to gardening. in Suttons Bay say their selection of plants and seeds took a hit.

“It was good but it was very unexpected,” said Plant Masters Retail Manager Rachel VanThomme.

Thats how she describes this last year for the nursery.

“We started off the year not even knowing if we were going to be open,” said VanThomme. “As soon as we were able to open up, we were so busy, we couldn’t keep up with it.”

VanThomme said there was constant demand for products.

“We started very quickly having to reseed and resow and regrow plants,” she said. “We grew up to three times more of annuals and vegetables than ever before in our 31 years now.”

The same went for their seeds, too.

“The seed packets were so popular last year,” said VanThomme. “Usually we have seed packets I’m able to reorder every couple of weeks until about July. Last year, we were sold out by March.”

They saw lots of new gardeners, and are preparing for them to come back this year.

“We are expecting about a 20 percent increase this year from people who did start gardening last year and are going to continue now that they know kind of the ins and outs,” said VanThomme.

But even though the nursery is doing as much prep work for this year as they can, they’re still not sure what this growing season will hold.

“We’re trying to be able to keep the demand for a little bit longer this year by increasing our products by about 20 percent, but we’ll see how it goes,” said VanThomme. “We don’t really know what’s going to happen.”