Missoula has a handful of solid options for picking up vegetable starts in spring, and knowing the difference between them matters when you are working with Montana’s short growing season. Not all starts are equal, and where you buy has a real effect on how your garden gets off the ground. Hours, seasons, and what each place carries change from year to year, so check before you make a special trip.
Local Nurseries Are Usually Your Best Option
A good local nursery carries starts that have been selected with Montana weather in mind. The staff can tell you which tomato varieties actually finish before first frost and which ones are too optimistic for Missoula’s short season. That local knowledge is hard to replicate from a paper tag.
In Missoula, Caras Nursery is a well-known option for vegetable gardeners. Selection covers a wide range of vegetables, herbs, and starts suited to Western Montana. If you are not sure which varieties work here and which ones are a stretch, the staff can point you in the right direction.
Clinton Farms Greenhouse in Clinton is worth the short drive east of town. It opens around mid-April and runs through mid-June, which makes it a good early-season option before other spots are fully stocked. Small, locally operated, and the plants reflect that.
Brown’s Greenhouse out of Florence supplies the starts you will find at Ace Hardware locations in Missoula. If you are already running errands and want to grab transplants without a dedicated nursery trip, the Brown’s plants at Ace are a solid choice. Locally grown, good variety selection, and available right alongside the garden supplies you are probably picking up anyway.
When you are browsing, look for compact plants with strong stems and even leaf color for the variety, with no yellowing, dead spots, or pests. Avoid anything leggy or pale. Check the bottom of the container too. If roots are circling out the drainage holes, the plant has been in that cell too long and may be slow to settle in after transplant. A healthy start should come out of its container cleanly, with roots that fill but do not overfill the soil. Our guide to what to look for when buying vegetable starts covers more.
The Saturday Farmers Market
The Missoula Farmers Market at Circle Square is a great place to find vegetable starts in Missoula. Many local growers bring plants that have already spent time in Montana weather, so the hardening-off work may be partly or fully done. Ask to be sure. A plant that has been sitting outdoors in Missoula in May is usually better prepared than one that came out of a greenhouse the day you bought it.
The tradeoff is selection. The market carries fewer varieties than a nursery, and popular ones sell out fast. Show up in the first hour if you want real choices. Most vendors are the growers themselves, so you can ask exactly how the plants were raised, whether they have been outdoors, and which varieties they personally prefer for Missoula gardens. Hard to get that from a tag.
The market runs on Saturdays starting in early May and goes through fall. Plant and start selection builds as the month goes on. For warm-season crops like tomatoes and peppers, the second half of May usually has the best combination of variety selection and planting timing.
Big Box Stores
Home Depot and Lowe’s both carry vegetable starts, and the plants themselves can be perfectly healthy. The main limitation is selection. Big box garden centers often stock what sells across the country, so short-season varieties sit alongside ones that need a longer, hotter summer than Missoula gets, and staff may know less about what actually finishes before September here. National brands do carry good short-season varieties, so read the tag.
Bonnie Plants, the brand you will often see at Home Depot and Lowe’s, lists a growing location in Plains, Montana on its own website. Bonnie runs many growing stations around the country, though, so the brand alone does not tell you where a particular plant was grown. If that matters to you, ask the store.
Check days to maturity on the tag, which for tomatoes and peppers usually counts from transplanting. MSU Extension suggests tomatoes that ripen in 60 to 70 days. Anything over 80 days is a stretch in most years. Same goes for peppers, melons, and other crops that need a long stretch of warm weather to produce well.
Do not assume any purchased start has been hardened off, wherever you buy it. Ask, and if the store cannot say, plan on one to two weeks of gradual outdoor exposure, or two to three weeks for warm-season crops, before the plants face full Missoula sun and wind. MSU Extension notes that greenhouse-grown transplants need this whether you grow them or buy them.
Grocery Stores and Hardware Stores
Rosauer’s, Albertsons, and local Ace Hardware locations carry basic vegetable starts in spring. Selection is narrow, usually limited to tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and a few herbs, but the plants are often in good shape and reasonably priced.
These work well for filling gaps or grabbing a few extra plants later in the season when nurseries and the farmers market start thinning out. Check days to maturity the same way you would anywhere else, and plan on hardening them off before they go in the ground if they have been kept indoors or you are not sure.
When You Buy Matters as Much as Where
Buying starts too early and rushing them outside can set you back more than waiting a week or two would. Missoula’s median last spring frost is mid May (about May 16 at the airport, per NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals), but in about 1 year in 10 it comes after June 1, and low spots where cold air pools can run later. Soil also warms more slowly than the air, often well into late May.
MSU Extension advises setting tomatoes out after the danger of frost has passed, and University of Minnesota Extension suggests waiting until night lows stay above about 50°F for peppers. Cucumbers, squash, melons, and basil are just as frost tender. A basic soil thermometer costs a few dollars and shows how quickly your beds are warming. The air can feel warm and sunny while the ground is still cold enough to slow warm-season transplants.
Buying in mid May and using the next week or two to harden starts off, with a cold frame or a spot indoors for cold nights, works well for most Missoula gardens. Warm-season crops usually go in from late May into early June, after a look at the 10-day forecast. The plants do not fall behind if the soil is warm and ready when they go in. They do fall behind when they sit in cold ground or catch a late frost right after transplant.
For more on timing, see when to buy vegetable starts in Missoula.
Sources
- Montana State University Extension, Growing Tomatoes in Montana
- Montana State University Extension, Successful Home Vegetable Gardening
- NOAA NCEI, U.S. Climate Normals 1991 to 2020 (Missoula International Airport)
- University of Minnesota Extension, Growing Peppers