Master Gardener plant sale set for April 13 | Arts & Community

Kim Magyar and Kathy Olmsted are co-chairs for the Coweta MGV 2024 Spring Plant Sale. Last Wednesday, they were among the dozens of volunteers busy preparing thousands of plants to be sold next month.

The preparations provide MGEVs with hands-on experience in plant care that they pass on to the community.

Items include perennials, trees, annuals, flowers and edible favorites including eggplant, lemongrass, parsley, peppers and tomatoes. However, the sale also features some more exotic offerings including African blue basil and Cuphea.

Once the items are prepared for sale, they’ll be transported from the greenhouse to the Agriculture Building. The demand for the event continues to grow, Olmsted said.

“We’ve moved 5,000 plants for one sale, and that was usually in four hours,” Olmsted said.

“We have a great variety of plants for sale, but the cost is where the real attraction is. People save a lot of money coming here instead of shopping at the regular retailers.”

As a result, it’s not uncommon to see the line begin well before daybreak. Nearly 1,000 people attended last year’s event, Magyar said, so she encourages people to get there early.

“We have seen the line wrap around the building, so those who showed up at 8:30 a.m. didn’t find too much left by the time they got in,” she said. “Last year we had a guy come and pretty much buy all of our hot peppers because he had a salsa-making business, and he walked…