Sizzling in Seattle - by Sue Shecket, webmaster and NW trial gardener

Mother Nature is having a lot of fun playing tricks on Northwest gardeners this year. After sharing in the cold temps and snow of Alaska all winter, we’ve now seemingly traded climate with our friends in the Northeast.

With no real rain since mid-May, and now suffering through a record breaking 100 degree heat wave, my salad greens are just a memory and the "Sungold" tomatoes and "Asian Trio"eggplant are growing like they are on steroids.

In the spirit of recycling, I found a use for this old Renee’s Garden seed rack frame, which has a new life as jailer for my rampaging tomatoes.

On the bright side, we’ve also traded our usual attire of fleece for cool surfer shorts, and are experiencing the pleasures of sitting outside on warm summer evenings while mastering the art of grilling all that summer squash along with our great NW salmon.

Once again I am kicking myself for not getting around to installing that drip irrigation system for my veggie beds, as it’s been a real challenge to keep things alive and hydrated.

Here's the view from my back deck - it's a very long climb down and up from garden to kitchen, so I get lots of additional exercise points just getting there and back multiple times daily.


I’ve been enjoying experimenting with color combos in the containers on my east facing deck. Here’s a shot of some of my favorites from seed - “Stained Glass” Salpiglossis, “Chantilly” Snapdragons and “Blue Ensign” Morning Glories.

I’m also a big fan of these tuberous begonias that especially enjoy my filtered morning sun and afternoon shade.











My neighbors always expect something spectacular to bloom in my front garden, so this year I went for lots of poppies - the French Flounce definitely got the most attention.


My garden also benefits greatly from the post-meal contributions of our 2 horses. Here's my boy Tazo, who is definitely the Cute One in our equine family.

As soon as our “normal” weather returns, I’ll be doing my fall planting of greens, lettuce, etc. I’ve already got a good stand of "Lacinato" Kale, "Bright Lights" Chard and "Jewel-Toned" Beets, which will be long term garden residents through the fall and winter.

Planting Out Peppers and a Recipe for Chicken Santa Cruz with Fresh Peppers

The Renee’s Garden office staff got their hands dirty planting pepper plants into our trial garden’s prepared beds a couple weeks ago.

Harvesting spinach

We’ve been learning the growing process for tomatoes and peppers this season and the pepper seeds that we sowed in March had grown into plants big enough to transplant into the ground. Plus our weather is now nice and warm – perfect for growing lots of delicious peppers.

We’ll be back in a month or so to start harvesting our bounty!

Here's a recipe making good use of peppers from one of Renee's cookbooks, Recipes From a Kitchen Garden.

Chicken Santa Cruz (Printable Recipe Click Here)

The aromatic, subtle flavors of this dish have drawn more raves than many other entrees we've prepared. Slow sauteing brings out the sweetness of the spices, herbs and onions and the rich mellow flavor of the ripe peppers. Please do try it. Don't forget crusty French bread. By the way, leftovers make great sandwiches.

4 boneless chicken breast halves, skinned and cut into 1/2-inch strips
3 tablespoons lemon juice
4 large fresh bell peppers -- use red, yellow, or deep green peppers (or any combination)
4 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large onions, finely sliced
2 teaspoons whole cumin seed or 1 teaspoon ground
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon ground
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh hot chile pepper or 1 teaspoon dried hot pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley or chopped cilantro

Sprinkle chicken strips with lemon juice and set aside. Cut peppers in half and remove seeds and ribs. Cut into 1 1/2-inch-wide strips. In a large skillet, heat the oil. Add garlic and cook one minute on moderate heat. Add the pepper strips, sliced onion, cumin, oregano and chile pepper. Stir the vegetables to coat evenly with oil. Cover and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes. Uncover pan, stir mixture, add chicken strips and stir to distribute them evenly in the vegetable mixture.

Cover skillet again and cook gently for 10 more minutes. Uncover; chicken should be cooked through and vegetable mixture should be tender and very aromatic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with chopped parsley or cilantro and serve.

Serves 4 to 6.

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Northeast Trial Garden Journal - by Jay Leshinsky

The Middlebury College student garden interns and I are well into this year's seed trials for Renee's Garden. Our main focus over the 7 years at this location is building soil fertility with compost and green manures. Middlebury College produces tons of compost from food prep materials, leaves, wood chips and cardboard gathered from on campus. We use the compost to enrich our sandy, stony soil.

One of our summer volunteers, Abel is spreading compost on one of our raised beds. The plant growing in the background is yellow sweet clover which we plant for our bees and for soil improvement. This is the second year we trialed our new Gourmet Golden Beets. Golden Beets are one of our main crops and the old varieties were often inconsistent in their germination and yield. Gourmet Golden Beets outperformed all other golden varieties. Our customers love them! There was even great competition from the Dining Service chefs to obtain our beet green thinnings.

Our mesclun lettuce and baby spinach has benefited from the cold, wet spring here in Vermont. Our yields were heavy and the taste superb! This spring we used predominantly Farmer's Market Blend and Monet's Garden for our lettuce and Catalina for our spinach. Two of this summers interns David and Jessie have just harvested the second cutting from our first planting of lettuce and our second planting (to the right in the photo) will be ready in a few days. Once we harvest the mesclun, we wash it in our well water and then spin it dry in our 2 gallon salad spinner.

Molly, one of the other summer interns, is doing some taste testing before she spins the cleaned lettuce.We are getting our first really hot and sunny weather and our warm weather crop are finally getting some good growth. More on those in my next blog.

Don't miss our featured website article for July :
Growing Vertical Vegetables

Renee at the White House

Renee's Garden was part of the Congressional Club's annual First Lady's Luncheon honoring Michelle Obama at the Washington Hilton last month.

This gala annual event, attended by Congressional, Supreme Court and Administration spouses as well as guests from around the country had a theme of "Forever Green", and event co-chair, Betty Ann Tanner, wife of the congressman from Tennessee, invited me to contribute our seeds for attendees. Individual packets of our Farmers Market lettuce and Pesto Basil were part of the beautiful gift bags given every attendee.
Best of all, I was invited to the VIP reception before the affair and had the thrill and honor of meeting Michelle Obama in person. I was also able to make a personal selection of our seeds to give to Michelle for the White House Garden. Michelle was everything I expected -- vibrant, graceful, clearly engaged and enjoying what she is doing. When you speak with her, you have her full attention and feel like you are the only person in the room. The luncheon itself was really fabulous. I was seated at a table quite close to the First Lady and other honorees, so I got to watch her "up close and personal" as she gave a very insightful speech on community service.

The First Lady also recently hosted a harvest party in the White House kitchen garden with the students from Bancroft Elementary to celebrate their hard work. Click here to read the blog post about it on the White House website. The kids harvested lettuce and sugar snap peas and then cooked a lunch from their harvest. More than 90 pounds of produce has been harvested so far from the White House kitchen garden.

Attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden – Our First Contest!

Although we love earthworms and bees here at Renee's Garden Seeds, there's nothing quite as exciting as catching a glimpse of a hummingbird zipping through your garden, looking for a snack. You can't deny the lift in your spirits when you watch a butterfly crash-land gently onto a bright “Red Sun” sunflower.

So, we thought. Why don't we share our winged friends with our readers?

Contest #1: A Blooming Butterfly and Hummingbird Garden Contest

For our first-ever contest on Renee's Blog, we want to offer each of our two contest winners a butterfly bonus pack and a hummingbird bonus pack. You can grow your very own butterfly and hummingbird gardens.

Here's what they look like:











These are both brand new for this season. Click here to read about these collections.

How does this contest work? This contest is open to our Canadian and US readers. You may enter once anytime before 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Friday, June 5th. The following week, we will select two responses at random, contact the winners, and send them each a butterfly garden and a hummingbird garden.

All you have to do is click on the "comments" link below this article. In the text box, tell us your favorite vegetable or flower and include your name and e-mail address so we contact you. After filling out the box, click the orange "publish your comment" button.

Two winners will be selected at random. The week of June 8th, we'll publish the winners' first names on the blog.


In Other News: Our New Intern!

Also new at Renee's Garden Seeds is Nellie Boonman, the marketing intern (me). I recently graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Business Administration and Entrepreneurship.

I'm very excited to work with Renee and the entire team here in beautiful Felton, California. The trial gardens are absolutely bursting right now with lettuce and spinach, so everybody in the office goes home with bags of leafy greens in their back seats. Definitely a perk. I've especially enjoyed the Mesclun mixes, which you can order online through our catalog. They're incredibly tasty with an Orange Citrus Dressing and our chopped Delicious Duo scallions.

I'll contribute occasionally to the Renee's Garden Seeds blog, Twitter account, and to the Renee's Garden Seeds Ning community. I look forward to hearing your gardening stories and comments.

Lettuce Days: Fields of Green & Red

Recently we visited Lettuce Field Day at Shamrock Seeds, a premier lettuce breeding company. One of the benefits of our location in Central California is that several of the seed growers we work with are within easy driving distance. Shamrock Seeds hosted us during their “Lettuce Days” open house in their beautiful trial fields in Gilroy, CA.

We lucked out with a perfect spring weather for touring the "living catalog" of Shamrock varieties, existing and under development, with knowledgeable Product Development Manager, Estella Barajas. The trials featured row after row of interesting varieties – from romaines to baby leaf varieties to wasabi arugula. Estella impressed us with her encyclopedic and very precise knowledge of every single variety and her boundless enthusiasm for the details of growing and producing seed for great greens. She showed us how she evaluates the different varieties for form, weight, disease resistance and slow bolting. And taste of course! Renee makes a point of tasting each variety in the field, so we had plenty of opportunity to talk about the various nuances of flavor.

The most exciting find of the day was completely new variety of arugula that tastes amazingly like the spicy wasabi that often accompanies sushi. We didn’t believe it until we tasted it. The first taste is the spicy, peppery flavor of arugula, but then the intense flavor of wasabi hits you. It was a truly uncanny experience discover the tangy, delicious flavor of the wasabi in a salad leaf! We all agreed that there would definitely be a great interest in the market for this new green. It is still in development by Shamrock but we’ll be testing it in our own trial gardens this fall.

Many specialty lettuces also caught our attention, especially a soft, delicate butter lettuce they usually sell mostly to European customers, and the intensely colored red leaf lettuces and mustards that are Shamrock specialties.

On the theme that "everything old is new again", Shamrock has reselected an old home garden favorite, Little Gem lettuce. Renee was especially excited to see and taste both green and red varieties of these old-fashioned little vase- shaped lettuces that qualities of both butterhead and romaine lettuces. Shamrock's breeders have refined this variety to have more crunch, sweetness and heavier heads.

We also were excited about the densely leafed new variety Shamrock is working on called "thousand leaf lettuce." It is the most densely packed l head of leaf lettuce we've ever seen and tastes good too.

Next up will be for us to evaluate these new variety" finds" several times in our own company trials to see if they will perform well for home gardeners before deciding to add them to our Renee's Garden line. There will be many salad meals to come…

-by Sarah Renfro, Renee's Garden Business Manager

Springtime in Seattle - Sue Shecket, webmaster and NW trial gardener

It was an exceptionally long, rough winter here in the Pacific Northwest. We do expect a bit of snow to dust us now and then in Seattle, but this year was the "real deal" , with bitter cold and lots of the white stuff that stuck around for weeks. While we had some fun sledding down our very steep hillside streets, watching people cross country ski downtown, playing bumper cars on the side streets and bemoaning the inability of the city to plow anywhere but the mayor's neighborhood, the novelty wore off very soon and thoughts turned to the sad fate of our more tender plants and trees.

Indeed I did loose a few old favorites to the snow load and deep freeze, but fortunately there is a happy ending to this tale of woe, as the exceptional cold also gave new life to long ago planted and forgotten bulbs. So when spring bloom season finally arrived (and even our Tulip Festival was 2 weeks late), it was spectacular.

Against all odds, my fall planted sweet peas soldiered through and are up and running, and the early spring seeded poppies and larkspur also stayed afloat. I had sowed fava beans as a cover crop in the vegetable beds, and many plants did survive to be turned under and enrich the soil for my April planting of lettuces, greens, brocolli raab, bok choi, radishes, scallions, spinach, peas, chard, kale, carrots and beets.

The raised beds look a bit like a laundry line with row covers over everything to protect the seedlings from heavy rain, digging cats, hungry birds and murauding slugs and snails (an ongoing NW battle). I do start my warm weather crops indoors, and have a good supply of my favorite Sungold tomatoes to set out and share, as well as a sampling of our container varieties. Cherry tomatoes are more reliable in my less than ideal conditions (half day sun, cool nights), but I have had success here with our container eggplant and peppers, so have started Little Prince Eggplant and Baby Belle Peppers as well.

We are already looking forward to our first spring salads and I am, as ever, thrilled to see so many healthy seedlings sprouting in the beds. I'll be watching those nighttime temperatures closely with my seed packets out and ready for sowing lots of flowers and warmer weather crops.

We just published this month's Enewsletter - click to check it out: Add to your "garden ideas" toolbox.

From Seeds to Seedlings

Everyone from our Renee's Garden office staff went back to the trial garden last week to learn the next stage in growing the tomato and pepper seeds that we sowed last month.

In just over a month’s time, the seeds germinated and grew to several inches, kept sheltered, warm and well watered in the greenhouse by trial garden managers Lindsay and Mila.

Now it was time for us to learn the next step in the growing process –"pricking out" the seedlings, which we learned simply means moving the rapidly developing seedlings into larger size pots so they have room to grow and thrive.

Although the daytime temperatures have warmed up here in Northern California into the 60°F range, night temperatures are still not consistently high enough (in the 50°F range) to move our baby seedlings outside right away and they need to grow bigger in order ensure survival in the garden when it warms up enough.

The seed flats that we started the plants in have now become tight quarters for the vigorous seedlings and they need more room so they can grow into big healthy plants that will transplant easily into the garden when the weather permits.

So the next step is to transplant them into bigger individual 4” pots to continue growing strong roots, and then to gradually adjust them to the variable garden temperatures outside of the greenhouse.
Armed with our sophisticated tools (chopsticks from the take-out Chinese restaurant near our office), Lindsay showed us how to gently loosen the seedling from the flat by lifting the soil with the chopstick – never tugging or pulling on the plant itself.

We used the chopstick to lift and move the soil in the 4” inch pot, creating a hole with enough space for the roots and no more than about 1/4 inch of the seedling to be under the soil. Taking care to ensure the roots all point down, we gently transferred all the seedlings into their larger homes, tapping the pots on the table to settle the soil back around the seedling rather then pressing it down. We learned how important it is to keep the potting soil fluffy so the containers drain properly.

After finely misting water over the newly transplanted seedlings, they went back into the greenhouse to continue growing. Over the next several weeks, Lindsay and Mila will feed and water the growing plants and move the pots outside during the warm days to “harden off” or acclimate the seedlings to outside conditions. After the night temperatures are consistently above 50°F., we’ll be back to move our babies into their final homes in the ground.

All this planting got me in the mood to get my vegetable garden started at home over the weekend. Although it is still too early to plant the corn, cucumbers and melons, I did get crops of lettuce, radishes, spinach and arugula sown in my new raised beds. Keeping in mind everything I’ve learned so far from our trial gardening experience, I was careful to keep the soil fluffy and to properly space the seeds so they have room to grow.

I’ll be keeping a close watch on the beds over the next 2 weeks to see how everything germinates. Just about the time I’m enjoying my first salad of baby greens, it will be time to plant all those pepper and tomatoes and sow the warm weather crops I’ll be enjoying this fall!

-Sarah Renfro, Renee's Garden Business Manager

"Pack Trials" - a showcase of new varieties

Last week was the "Pack Trials" week throughout California. This is an annual event where all the American seed producing companies and many from abroad as well, grow out and showcase all their new flower varieties in greenhouse settings to introduce them to their customers and the media.There are several dozen locations to visit up and down the coast that have these official greenhouse open days and many folks spend a whole week traveling from one to another.

At our office, I take a group to visit some of our favorite vendors that are drivable in one day from Felton where we are located. It's always a fascinating tour with lots of plant material presented in their most alluring fashion given the constraints of greenhouse growing. We see both varieties that we are interested in trialing as well as lots of the varieties that will end up being massmarketed in the next two years by large growers.
Our job is to pick and choose what works best for our customers. Then we make a list, get sample seeds of all our choices and grow them out to see what we think of the varieties grown in our own trial garden from seed. For me, the best part of Pack Trials is not just seeing the flower varieties, but having time to spend with the breeders and developers of these new cultivars which I always find fascinating. Here are a few pictures:
Trial garden manager Lindsay admires the new " Fantasy" series of linaria from Japanese flower breeders Takii seeds . We decided to make a mix of all the pastel colors. Next up will be to grow them out from seed in both California and Vermont to see how they do.

Knowledgeable and delightful Elizabeth Sahin of the extraordinarily talented breeding company, Sahin Seeds , shows off her new fragrant dwarf stock to us. We thought it was very sweet smelling, but prefer the taller one we already sell from another company. She had many other great new selections though, including seed for Stevia, the sweet tasting herb which we will trial this spring and also a Korean mint whose edible flowers attract butterflies and taste like root beer.

Takii seeds product manager Jessica and I consider whether this dwarf red colored Zinnia in their "Dreamland" series is more crimson or scarlet in hue. In the end, I decided to try the whole lovely mix of colors!

Our East Coast trials manager, Jay Leshinsky, was visiting from still cold and snowy Vermont for this event and you can see him how pleased he is to be enjoying this comfortable warm greenhouse surrounded by gorgeous flowers.
My favorite seedsmen Sjaak Ros, from major Dutch supplier Kieft, seeds shows off their new Armeria to Lindsay. We love the color combination of brick and white and plan to try it from seed this spring. This perennial blooms the first year from seed and is extremely weather tolerant.

Beth Benjamin, major Renee's Garden inspiration and our horticultural advisor, and I enjoy the 5 foot tall snapdragon bred for single cuts -- these are very special and wouldn't grow this way at home gardens, but they are spectacular in this greenhouse setting.

The Renee's Garden crew each picked out their favorite new Viola cultivar for this picture and grabbed a sixpack from the display so we could memorialize the choices here for fun. There were about 30 different colors and forms to choose from!

Learning How to Sow Seeds

Guest post by Sarah Renfro, Renee’s Garden Business Manager

The office staff at Renee's Garden spent an afternoon in the garden last week learning how to sow seeds from our Lindsay and Mila, our Trial Gardeners, (with horse Ruby keeping us company in the background). Since our business office is located about 2 miles away from the trial garden, we here at the office don’t get as much “dirt” time as the trial garden staff.

Lindsay is organizing a series of educational sessions for our staff so we can be more confident and familiar with growing our seeds. Everyone in the office, including bookkeeper Cheri, order entry manager Calley, administrative assistant Heidi, customer service Susan and sales associate Kathy will be coming to the trial garden regularly. This week we learned more about the best techniques for seed starting. Some staff members are already experienced with starting seeds inside (Cheri’s husband is a chile pepper freak so she is very familiar!) but others are newbies.

This summer the trial garden will be evaluating many different types of tomatoes and peppers so this was the perfect opportunity for us to help out!

Mid-March is the time to start seeds of tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse. First we prepared trays with seed starting mix and watered the soil so it is damp but still fluffy. Then we laid out the seeds on top of the soil, about ¼” apart in a grid pattern. Finally we covered the seeds with a thin layer of vermiculite (being careful not to inhale this clay by-product) and gave the trays a gentle watering.

Between all of us we sowed over 500 tomato and pepper seeds! After they germinate and grow a couple of inches, we’ll head back to the greenhouse to transfer the seedlings into individual pots. In another month or so, it’s time to get dirty and plant everything into the ground.

We’ll all be taking home extra seedlings to try in our various home gardens. I am building brand new raised vegetables beds in my front yard this year (more on this in another blog post). Our newest staff member, Heidi will be growing the plants in containers on her deck. One thing is certain – we will all be enjoying the fruits of our labors later this summer!