Spring Gardening Activities with the Office Crew - by Lindsay, Trial Garden Manager

As the gardening season gets underway, we always like to involve everyone at the Renee's Garden business office with our trial garden activities by having the group over four regular visits every few weeks. Whether it be sowing seed, weeding, thinning seedlings or just touring the trials of different varieties, it is always something that everyone really enjoys and learns from. It is a great way to reconnect as a group of co-workers and share the garden. Last week, Cheri, Calley, Heidi, Nellie, Kathy, and Rick came to the garden to practice their seed starting skills.

Last season, the groups' main focus was on vegetables, specifically peppers and tomatoes, so everyone could experience the entire process, from sowing seeds to harvest. We started seeds in the greenhouse and I kept the seed flats watered in the until they germinated and ready for the next step.

When the young seedlings were large enough to handle, everyone came back to transplant them from their seedling flats into individual pots. I really like to have people that do not have a ton of experience with growing from seed to transplant tomatoes and peppers because they are resilient and quick to grow.

Once the seedlings grew into larger and stronger plants, and acclimated to the outdoors, we had a planting day to plant the sturdy seedlings out into the beds to grow to maturity. Later everyone harvested the fruit from the plants that they had sown themselves.

This spring, I am changing the focus to flowers. And not just varieties we are evaluating in the trial garden, but flowers for everybody to take home for their own gardens. I chose 6 different easy to grow flowers that would grow in similar conditions, attract pollinators and look nice together: Sunflower ‘Junior’, Salvia ‘Marble Arch’, Cosmos ‘Dancing Petticoats’, Zinnia ‘Persian Carpet’, Dahlia ‘Watercolors’ (a new introduction in 2011), and Nasturtium ‘Vanilla Berry’. I prepared a kit for each person that had the seed packets, "6 pack" containers and sterile soil mix, plant tags for labeling, and a list of simple instructions of how to sow the seed them.

Our first session sowing the flowers went very smoothly, and everyone enjoyed themselves: There’s nothing like the gardeners version of chatting and "relaxing over a couple of 6 packs. " I was really happy to see everyone with their newly sown flats of 6 packs, bringing them into the greenhouse. I will keep them watered and tended until the seedlings have germinated and it is time for the next step.

Once the seedlings are large enough to handle, each person can choose to thin out extra seedlings either by just cutting them off at the base, leaving just one seedling remaining with space to grow, or by dividing the seedlings in each 6 pack, transplanting them into individual pots. This just depends on how many plants each person wants to end up with.

It's normal for beginners to want to keep as many seedlings as they can. I remember a day that I wouldn’t think of thinning plants out either, but wanted to keep them all. I guess I have just developed a little different mentality since growing plants is something that I do every day. Thinning out extra seedlings has become a necessity to avoid being totally overwhelmed by so many plants. Thinning seedlings properly also gives each little young plant the room it really needs to grow to maturity successfully.

When the plants are large enough, we will gradually acclimate them to the outdoors to "harden off " or get accustomed to outdoor conditions for a week or so. After that, each person will pick them home to plant and enjoy. Hopefully I am helping “plant a new seed” in everyone’s confidence in growing flowers.

Our Day at the 2010 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show

Every year, the entire Renee’s Garden office staff takes a full day off to attend the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. This annual five day garden lovers' extravaganza is a showcase for the latest ideas in garden design, along with a multitude of shopping opportunities for both plants and gardening supplies. This year I asked everyone to share their their favorite impressions from the show:

Lindsay, Trial Garden Manager: “There was so much to see and many different unique landscape displays. My favorite, from landscape designer Keeyla Meadows, was a vivid display of ornamental and edible plants that integrated a lot of art into the landscape.  I liked the custom made pots with mixed plants and stepping stones that looked like large leaves."

I also liked the garden with a sculpture of big giant blue lips with blue rocks, and of course, blue and  yellow flowering plants all around. It just made me laugh."

Mila, Trial Garden Ass't Mgr.: “ I noticed a lot of the gardens incorporated edible landscaping into their designs – so many vegetables are so beautiful and ornamental. My favorite this year was not exactly a garden in the traditional sense - it was a small building with the outside walls made of succulents. It was only big enough for a dinning room table, but I want to move in!”

Cheri, Accounting Manger: “ How they can build such elaborate gardens with waterfalls and koi ponds in just 3 days is unbelievable. The New Orleans Bayou looked as though you were walking through the bayou to a little shanty house with a fence made of rebar with plants growing out of it. Upon closer look it was actually sheet music and the plants were growing from the notes.  Another favorite garden was comprised of trees, plants and two waterfalls. A walkway of stone with moss growing between the stones separated the two waterfalls. Peeking out between the trees at the top of the larger waterfall was a huge T-Rex. My son would have loved it!  Oh, and then there was the shopping…so many booths with garden tools, decorations and plants. My favorite find was the bird feeder made of a mason jar and colored plates. I couldn't leave without it.”

Heidi, Customer Service Rep.: “I loved the display that used living walls to make an outdoor room surrounded by a moat of water which you entered by walking across huge rocks. The texture on the walls (planted with a huge variety of succulents) was as  interesting from far away as it was up close. It was a show stopping design.”

Kathy, Sales: “The landscape designers outdid themselves this year. One exhibit combined elements of whimsy from Picasso inspired ceramic art, giant Matisse style ruby red flower stepping stones, complimented by borders of rich, primary color flowers.  The inviting exhibits transported you to magical wonderlands like a New Orleans front porch, complete with alligators and jazz, a courtyard in Tuscany with  an Italian fountain and hanging flower pots, and a very fragrant, spectacular four season floral display fit for a  queen kept bringing me back to enjoy once more."

Nellie, Marketing Ass't.:  “ I bought a wonderfully scented Perlagonium plant from Geraniacea, a small nursery in Marin County, California. Their booth at the show was what first drew me in – the retro neon sign and the string lights were too cute to resist.  Then, Renee told me I had to go press the leaves of the geraniums, and smell my fingers. She pointed out that each plant’s leaves smelled different from one variety to the next– one like lime, one like potpourri, and even one that smelled like chocolate mint. “When you take one home, you can pluck some of the leaves off – I like the rose-scented ones – and put them in a container of sugar and make shortbreads and cookies out the sugar.” So I found a lemony rose variety to bring back to my sunny backyard back in Santa Cruz.”

News From Our Vermont Trial Garden: Thinking about Spring

Jay Leshinsky, Garden Advisor/Manager 

Here in the Champlain Valley of Vermont the snow cover has almost totally disappeared and plans for this summer's trial garden are well underway. Ever since the Middlebury College Organic Garden began in 2003 we've been doing seed trials for Renee's Garden. Last night I met with this year's summer garden interns (Shane, Hannah, Max and Sarah) and a group of 5 volunteers to determine how we will run our trials for this year.

When we do trials at the College garden we are sometimes testing new varieties and sometimes growing out our current varieties under different conditions in different parts of the garden. Renee sends us new varieties she is considering for our seed list. We evaluate flowers, herbs and vegetables for germination, early growth, disease and insect resistance, and harvest quality. Vegetables are the most popular to trial because of our taste testing. In past years we trialed Padron Peppers, Baby Persian cucumbers and Crispy Colors Duo Kohlrabi before they were included in the Renee's Garden seed list.

It is always lots of fun for the garden interns and volunteers to taste our trial vegetables right out of the garden as well as to use them in recipes of their own creation. The student's creativity produces some very unique "recipes". Several years ago when we were doing edible flowers trials with nasturtiums I worked with a student who loved the flower's peppery taste so much that she decided to experiment with nasturtium leaves. She would take a nasturtium leaf and spread cream cheese (we are from a dairy state) on it and then roll it up like a wrap. Last summer I worked with a student who made her version of capers by pickling green nasturtium seeds she picked from our trial varieties after the flowers had bloomed out.

We also run trials on some of Renee's Garden herbs and flowers for their effectiveness as pollinator attractors. Over the past four years we worked with some of Professor Helen Young's students to observe which flowers and flowering herbs are attracting native pollinators as well as honey bees. Her students have begun to assemble a list of flowers that are attracting a wide range of pollinators at different times during the growing season.

We plant the flowers at the end of each of our planting beds and during the summer and in the fall Professor Young's students record and identify the pollinators they find in the flowers and herbs. This past summer we grew "Marble Arch" salvia next to "Bridal Veil" nigella and researchers noticed a distinct preference among our pollinators. Throughout the observation period the honey bees busily worked the nigella blossoms, while right next to them the bumble bees were working just as busily in the salvia. It's a wonderful garden benefit to have these students doing research that is so specific to our garden site, and it helps us expand our organic techniques.

"Marble Arch" salvia

"Bridal Veil"  nigella

Use Your Frozen Veggies for a "Warm Up" Soup

Last Christmas season, I was yearning for a short trip to someplace sunny and completely different. My friend Pat Pacheco agreed to join me for a few days in Northern Arizona. We flew to Phoenix, rented a car, and drove to the Sedona area where we were fortunate enough to rent a little place with a kitchen.

We had a wonderful time hiking and exploring and we also did some serious cooking. Pat treated me to her family recipe for homemade chicken and vegetable soup - her family is from Northern Mexico - and she had adopted it from their version. We thought this soup was so good on cold nights after being outdoors all day that we never did make it out to dinner.

The soup combines the flavors of chicken, corn, potatoes and other vegetables in a really satisfying way with lots of color and flavor. Now I've made it three or four times and can share it with confidence. One of the reasons I like this recipe so much is that it's a good way to use frozen vegetables that you have preserved from last summer's garden. If you don't have any of those, it's good way to take advantage of economical flash frozen veggies from the supermarket.

Don't be afraid of using all the garlic and bay leaves this recipe calls for. It seems like a lot, but these seasonings plus the corn and potatoes are what make the soup savory and delicious.

Pat's Scrumptious Chicken and Vegetable Soup

You'll need: One large deep soup pot

2 large onions cut in coarsely cut in large chunks

10 cloves garlic, peeled and cut quarters

8 bay leaves

4 to 5 large carrots, peeled, cut in 1" slices

5 medium to large boiling potatoes, chopped in 1" cubes.

1 nice, plump, 3 1/2 to 5 lb. chicken, washed,
    with liver and excess fat removed

3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 Jalapeno chile, cut in quarters or one dried
   medium hot chile of your choice
1 sixteen to twenty ounce bag of frozen corn kernels
1 sixteen ounce bag of frozen sliced green beans
1 sixteen ounce bag of frozen garden peas
1 cup of chopped fresh parsley or cilantro

Put the onions, garlic, bay leaf, carrots, potatoes, whole chicken, salt and pepper and chile into the deep soup pot in the order given. Add enough water to just cover the chicken. Bring the pot to a boil, then return to a simmer and continue to cook until the chicken is completely done and the drumstick pulls away easily. This usually takes about 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on your stove.

Remove the pot from the stove, and take the chicken out of the soup. Cool slightly, then take off the skin and meat. Chop all the meat into bite-size pieces. Skim off excess fat from soup. Add the chicken back to the soup. Bring back to a boil then add the frozen corn, green beans and peas. Stir well and return pot to a boil. Lower heat and cook gently for another 10 minutes. Add chopped parsley or cilantro. Sample the soup as it may need more salt to match your taste.
Serve hot making sure each diner gets plenty of the veggies and chicken along with the broth. The soup tastes even better the next day!
Makes 8-10 servings or more depending on the size of your appetite.
At home, I freeze the soup in individual portions and look forward to eating it for lunch, especially on long draggy days when I need a little flavorful and rewarding but virtuous comfort food.

Winter Planning In the Trial Garden

-by Lindsay, Trial Garden Manger

Winter is in full force at the Renee’s Garden Trial garden. The weather is cold and the heavy rains continue. This is the time of year when I do a lot of garden planning. I keep a detailed database of all of the trial varieties and I already have about 200 varieties on the list for the 2010 sprng/summer season. Our database helps me to keep an updated inventory of both the seed samples that I have, and what I still need to request from our seed producers.

Renee and I browse a lot of producers offering lists and want to grow everything that catches our eye. But we have to balance that with reality and space constraints. To make a sensible plan, I have to figure out how many feet I need to grow of each variety, and then plot it out on my illustrated maps of the trial garden spaces. This gives me a real sense of how we will use the space, and what I have to work with. The garden mapping is also necessary so that we can rotate our crops appropriately. For example, we do not want to grow tomatoes or any brassicas in the same place year after year because soil diseases may accumulate.

Our garden is in good shape despite the weather. Last fall in the “In the Trial Garden” section of our monthly e-newsletter, we featured the cover crop blend that we sow in all of our empty raised beds. Our soil is extremely sandy and porous, so a good cover crop to protect it and help build organic matter is very important in the winter season . I use is a mix of oat grass, vetch, bell beans and peas. The vetch, beans and peas help by gathering nitrogen into their roots, to benefit the soil. The thick roots of the oat grass hold on to the soil and protect it from erosion. The cover crop is now mature and surviving happily in the cold wet weather. Instead of tilling the cover crop into the soil in spring, we pull the plants and quickly compost them. When the plants have broken down in finished compost, we add it back into the garden to take advantage of all its benefits.

In the beds that were not given over to cover crops, there is still much to feast on at this time of year. Our northern CA trial garden is in USDA Zone 7/8. A cold winter night here is usually no lower than 22-25°F and ground does not freeze hard. Cool weather crops that were sown last fall to overwinter are still standing mature in the ground for us to finish harvesting them: Napa and Green Cabbage, Carrots, 10 different varieties of Lettuce, Spinach, Pak Choy and Kale. There are also Leek, Onion, and Beet seedlings that will mature once the weather starts to warm up in the spring.
We also have many varieties of fall -sown flowers sitting patiently in seedling stage that will start to grow and mature when the weather starts to warm. Sweet Peas look so delicate, yet we have found that they can really tolerate frost when they are small seedlings. There are eight varieties of Poppies that we had direct sown into the garden beds that germinated at the start of the rains. Once they begin to grow vigorously, we will thin out the seedlings to give them adequate room to mature. We are looking forward to this spring when there will be a fabulous show of colorful flowers!

Please -- Complain to Me. Plus Winter Squash Curry Coconut Soup

I was delighted to find Renee's Garden has earned two Dave's Garden "Five Top Garden Badges". Besides many great gardening forums and excellent services, Dave's Garden encourages members to rate garden product websites. Renee's ranks high, but when I read through all the comments about us, I saw that while there were 44 positives, there were 3 negative ones (although not very current as one dated to 2003, because "anything that plays on the web stays on the web").

More to the point: when I read them, I felt so frustrated! One negative complaint was that we had sent the wrong packet with the comment that while she knew companies often substituted items, we had exceeded her tolerance for that. The truth is that our two seed packet order "pickers" had made a mistake and pulled the wrong item. We don't substitute items and would not do so, because if you order something from us, I assume that you want that item, not something else. Errors in orders don't occur very often, but our order pickers are human and, once in a great while, they may mix up packets or omit one.

It is my fervent wish that customers whose orders are incorrect would call us on our toll-free number (1-888-880-7228) or e-mail us (customerservice@reneesgarden.com) as soon as they see the error, so we can properly apologize and replace the packet immediately.

One of the other complaints was of getting crushed seeds with a comment about quality control. We do ship in padded "jiffy packs", but the realities of the Post Office mean that once in a while a packet gets mashed in transit. Once again, if that person had called or e-mailed us, we would have sent them a replacement the same day.

What's hard for me to understand is: why do people with complaints make the time to post the complaint on the Internet without being willing to take the time to contact the company who made the error in the first place?  Very often the order can be corrected and they can get what they wanted and paid for. Moreover, why do people assume that if a mistake happens on their order, it's somehow an indication that as a company we don't care about quality or customer satisfaction?

My company's policy is that we treat our customers in the same way we would want to be treated as a customer -- an extension of the Golden Rule. Perhaps it's a sign of the times, but unfortunately some customers just assume that even small companies like ours don't care about their customers and don't intend to do a good job. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Soup

SOUP OF THE EVENING
Beautiful soup
So rich
 So green,
Waiting in a hot tureen
Who for such dainties would not stoop.

Soup of the evening
Beautiful Soup,
Soup of the evening,
Beautiful Soup
Lewis Carroll -- "Alice in Wonderland"

Lindsay's Winter Squash Curry Coconut Soup

Having lots of winter squash harvested last fall from our trial gardens, Trial Garden Manager Lindsay concocted this lovely soup. She's a very talented cook and often comes up with ways to incorporate her favorite Asian flavors into everyday meals. This is one of my favorites. I've made this recipe 3 different times now and can recommend it heartily. I have happily divided the soup into in lunch-size portions and then frozen it in individual containers. Then I take the individual portions to the office with me and microwave them into hot deliciousness to enjoy on cold afternoons. I particularly like to top each portion with fresh whole plain yogurt and chopped fresh cilantro. Yum.

2 large leeks, each 1 1/2 inches in diameter, long white shank portions only

3 tablespoons canola or other mild cooking oil

1 tablespoon good-quality curry powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 1/2 cups cooked hard-shelled winter squash, seeds and skins removed, flesh mashed

1 13 1/2-ounce can “light” coconut milk

4 cups chicken stock

2 cups coarsely chopped fresh cilantro, divided into1-cup portions

GARNISH: Seeds from one large pomegranate and cilantro

Cut the leeks in half lengthwise. Wash all the layers very well to remove grit, then thinly slice. Heat the oil in a large heavy soup pot. Add the sliced leeks and sauté over medium heat for 5 or 6 minutes until they are well caramelized and beginning to brown. Stir in curry powder, ground cayenne and salt and sauté slowly for another minute or two. Add the cooked squash and entire can of coconut milk and mix in well. Add the chicken stock slowly and then add 1 cup of fresh cilantro. Mix thoroughly to smoothly combine ingredients. Bring to a boil, then immediately reduce to simmer and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and add more salt if desired. If the soup seems too thick, add a little more chicken stock. Serve piping hot in large individual soup bowls. Sprinkle the top of each serving with the additional cup of cilantro and the pomegranate seeds.

Note: If you prefer a smoother texture, blend the soup in a food processor or blender before serving.

---
Visit our Facebook to join the discussion or leave a comment below

Season's end - with disappearing melons

Despite an epidemic of late blight in the Northeast this summer, it was a very good season for our trial garden here in Vermont at the Middlebury College Organic Garden…and the season hasn't quite ended yet even though it's early December and we still have no snow cover! Although most of the garden beds are planted with cover crops, our plantings of Lacinato kale and Catalina spinach keep on producing. A nice balance of ample rainfall and sunny days keep them re-growing after each picking. They seem to get sweeter and sweeter with each frost.

Much of the Northeast was devastated by late blight on tomatoes this summer. Lush tomato plants would turn black and die almost overnight. We were spared late blight on our tomatoes -our micro-climate and topography helped a great deal. We are on a south-sloping, windy knoll with well drained (and very stony) sandy loam soil, situated far from any other gardens or farms that grow vegetables. When farms 2 miles away got 3 inches of rain in a few hours, we got 1 inch. Although we did get early blight which affected the lower leaves on our tomato plants, our Sungold cherry tomatoes still produced a fine crop.

It was a fine summer for Endeavor pickling cucumbers. In a year when so many people needed help from the food shelf, our pickling harvest was a favorite at our local food shelf. Some also went to Weybridge House, Middlebury's environmental dorm where the students had a goal of eating locally (food grown within 100 miles of the campus) for the school year. Summer nights were full of the smells and tastes of their preserving efforts. Besides cucumber pickles, favorites were "dilly" beans (using our Slenderette and Rattlesnake green beans), pickled Super Sugar Snap peas and even pickled green cherry tomatoes.

The great mystery of this summer was the "disappearing watermelon". With great anticipation, the interns and I were really looking forward to enjoying our crop of sweet Rainbow Sherbet watermelons. As the melons neared perfect ripeness, they mysteriously started disappearing. We would arrive in the morning to find a melon missing from its spot in the patch and a neatly cut stem as its reminder.

This phenomenon coincided with the return of students to campus for the fall semester. Through the student grapevine, we heard that some students thought these tasty treats were there for students to pick and enjoy whenever they got the urge. So it was watermelon connoisseurs rather than vandals who took the melons!

We got the word out: we would have ripe melon available for each and every student who volunteered to work at the garden. Our volunteer numbers jumped up as we cut up the just picked melons at each day's break time. Those melons were the source lots of smiles and great discussions as we all ate together.

- Jay Leshinsky

Our multi-talented photographer

Do you ever wonder who takes all the pictures featured on the Renee’s Garden Seeds online catalog? With hundreds of trial varieties to shoot, it’s certainly a challenge, but it’s a dream job for our seasoned photographer Karen Bailey, who has worked for Renee’s Garden Seeds for the past five years. She sat down with me one recent sunny fall afternoon to share a little bit about her life and art.

Not only does Karen take great pictures, but she also is a painter and musician who plays the ukulele and the banjo in a Bluegrass/Cajun/Celtic/Jazz/Pop band called Relative Insanity. “We sound a lot like the music from the film ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’,” she says, describing the band which includes her brother-in-law, sister and cousin.

"I never met an instrument I didn’t like, except for the piano. That’s just one I don’t play,” she added. “All I ever wanted to do growing up was to play music with my sister, and now the whole family gets together to jam -- it's great.” Karen's husband Bob is an accomplished amateur luthier who makes the instruments she plays as well as fine custom instruments for other musicians.

Karen graduated from San Jose State with a B.S. in Graphic Design and has been painting for over 30 years. Her first career was as a biological illustrator and her work was published in numerous biology texts and professional journals. Then, in the 1990’s, Karen turned her attention to fine art and plein-air painting and her work appeared in diverse galleries, in both Southern California and as far north as Mendocino, California.

In recent years, she has developed a strong interest in digital photography and has taken a lot of courses in digital effects. This started her in a new direction, combining oil paintings with photography to create mixed media paintings and handmade books.

We're proud that Karen brings these considerable and diverse artistic talents to Renee's Garden as our trial garden and web photographer, enabling her to incorporate a unique artistic aesthetic into her photographic style.

Announcing the 2009 Photo Contest Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 6th Annual Renee's Garden Photo Contest. We received so many beautiful entries and enjoyed seeing them all. Thank you to everyone who entered the contest -- we are sending out your complimentary seed packets this week.
---------------------------------------------
1st Place Winner: "Super Bush Tomatoes"

-Katie Neumann, Woodland, CA

"I took this photo of one of my Super Bush Tomatoes (GREAT for small space gardening!!). I had just finished watering my garden and was struck by the beauty of this particular tomato. The contrast of colors between the red tomato and green leaves in the early evening light really caught my eye.

The past few years I have enjoyed starting my plants from seed. There is a huge difference in the quality of your plants when you start them from great seeds—my friends, family and even our chickies can attest to that! I always give away my extra plants to friends and family and it has been fun to see them have great success in their own gardens."

Second Place Winner - Asclepias Bright Wings
- Liane Doxey, Brookfield, IL

Liane puts it simply: "This one is a family favorite."

Second Place Runner-Up - The Joy of Sweet Peas
Shirley Ward, Big Sur, CAf

 "Wonderful sweet peas! Chiffon Elegance, Royal Wedding, Regal Robe,Queen of the night, Watermelon, April in Paris, Painted lady, Mary Lou Heald, Zinfandel, and Cupanis Original.

"This is a 60 foot row of fragrant and delicious blossoms."
Shirley is from Esalen Farm and Garden

Kids Contest Winners

JoAnne Wallace, Hershey, PA
These kids know how to cool off: popsicles and the shade provided by an enormous "Trombetta di Albenga" Italian summer squash plant.

Saniya with Trombetta Squash

"We love your seeds and your company.
We have a half acre of edible garden for our restaurant and just ripped out our lawn in our new house to plant the garden where these photos come from. Saniya loves the garden and I love that she eats anything from it.   She spends the day chewing up basil leaves, green coriander seeds and picking cherry tomatoes.  She also loves freshly pulled beets and radishes (I have to remind her that they taste better with the dirt washed off!)."  
-Kelly Majid, Berkeley, CA,
(Their restaurant is Zatar Restaurant in Berkeley, CA)

Click below to view and download the desktop wallpapers made from our winners' pictures.

To add as your desktop wallpaper, click on the image below to get the full-size, right click on the full-sized image and click "set as desktop background."
Desktop Wallpaper - Asclepias Bright Wings  and Super Bush Tomato

Renee's Seeds "do the show" in Chicago

-by Nellie Boonman, RGS Marketing Assistant

A few weeks ago I took the opportunity to venture back to my hometown, Chicago, to work at the Independent Garden Center show at Navy Pier Exposition Center. Renee and I met up with our East Coast sales manager Jay (who also works as our Vermont trial gardener), to set up our booth. The empty, carpeted space would transform into the home for Renee’s Garden Seeds for three busy days.

If you’ve never been to a trade show, just imagine a space the size of 2 or 3 football fields filled with enormous cardboard boxes, tubing, wire and forklifts. Within a matter of hours, the entire place transformed into a wonderland for gardeners, filled with fire-breathing pots, enormous gushing fountains, and all sorts of plants, trees and every kind of garden tool. It's the place to see the latest and greatest in products for the garden, and we saw a lot of people looking like kids in a candy store.

Companies exhibited at the 2009 Independent Garden Center show for several reasons: to talk to their current wholesale customers, to introduce new products, and to find prospective new independent garden center customers. Attending the wholesale-only show were buyers and owners from garden centers and nurseries from all across the country. Because the IGC is specifically targeted to independent garden centers; no discount or "big box stores" enter in the picture. These independent garden center buyers look hard for products (like Renee's Garden seeds) that help differentiate them from their "big-box" competition. Many retailers also brought their families – after all, many independently run garden centers are family-owned so it’s only natural to bring the kids along!

Renee’s Garden showcased several of our handsome Garden Trellis and Garden Gate displays filled with our watercolor seed packets. For seed companies, well-designed and attractive displays are absolutely crucial. Seed packets aren’t like garden hoses – you can’t just stack them on a shelf or expect people to rummage through a bin to find what they want. Buyers, bloggers (like Mr. Brown Thumb and Linda from Garden Girl) and press people stopped at our booth to “shop” our displays and to look at Renee’s new varieties for 2010. They asked questions about our seeds and talked with Renee, who is a wealth of information and suggestions for encouraging and supporting home gardeners.

Being in Chicago also gave us an opportunity to enjoy some great restaurants and the wonderful atmosphere of this exciting city. We also attend several other major garden trade shows across the country during the year - an excellent opportunity to meet our customers and keep abreast of innovations and trends in the garden world.