Sweetwater Nursery

Sweetwater Nursery is in Sebastopol, in coastal apple country west of Petaluma. I’m about 100 miles away in Sacramento, where the local Natural Foods Co-​op carries herb, pepper, tomato and some other seedling plants from Sweetwater Nursery.
I was intrigued by a label on one of the tomato plants that happened to have shriveled badly due to lack of water. The plant’s label said «Black From Tula: Ugly, but the best tasting tomato.» How can you pass that one up? Once home, I allowed the plant to rest and drink for the night. The next afternoon, I stripped the lower branches and planted it deeply in Happy Frog soil and worm castings.
For the next two months, the plant remained tiny. I called Sweetwater Nursery to find out more about my diminutive, ugly tomato plant. No one answered and my first voicemail went unanswered. I called again a few weeks later, and got a bit of help from a staffer who referred me to their seedling distributor for more info.
Once flowers set, the plant was fertilized 3x/​mo. Suddenly, in late June, it began to grow. And grow. By mid July it was producing wine-​colored, green-​shouldered, fist-​sized fruit with amazing Cherokee-​like flavor — and, with more than two dozen green toms growing on the 5-​foot vine. Score!
Bottom line — Great product, but you’ll probably need to do your own plant research.

Bought some beautiful organic herb seedlings from Sweetwater at my local nursery (Golden Nursery in San Mateo) — sage, thyme, and oregano. Thanks for the gorgeous plants!

We’ve been buying starter veggie plants and some seeds from Sweetwater for about 3 years now. They have great heirloom strains and the plants grow like crazy in the Bay Area climate. During a storm break on Saturday, we just pulled another bowl of tomatoes off the vines — December 1, 2012. Super friendly people, they’ll tell you what is most appropriate for your particular conditions, I highly recommend them.

I have bought a lot of various starter veggie plants from sweet water nursery over the years and they are getting better and better every year. This year was the best. I have a vacant lot that I plant on every year and this year I had so many veggies that i had to both give away lots of veggies and also freeze many. I highly recommend them bove others. They can be found all over the bay area. Thanks, Chris