Posts Tagged ‘Renees Garden’

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Growing Herbs in Winter


2011
12.15

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Posted in Herbs in the garden, Herbs in the kitchen, Home Garden, Oh Grow Up! | 1 Comment »

fresh cut herbs

fresh cut herbs brought indoors, will stretch your fresh herbs by about two weeks.

I’m starting seed in the Aerogarden this week.

Aeroponics is a soil-free growing method where plant roots are suspended in air within a 100% humidity, highly-oxygenated growing chamber. Because the roots are bathed with ideal levels of nutrients, water and oxygen, plants grow significantly faster, are healthier and have a higher nutrient content than plants grown in soil. It’s like having a little green house on the kitchen counter.

I’ll grow bright green lettuces and herbs all winter. The 70 million Americans buy organic products weekly will appreciate the simplicity and convenience of Aerogrow.

This little table top garden is a defiant cabin fever cure for us die hard gardeners. AeroGarden is not promoted to help with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or “cabin fever.” Still anything that tricks my plants into believing the sun is shining, has a positive affect on my attitude.

Gardening is America’s #1 hobby with more than 70 million active gardeners. There are 18 million fresh herb gardeners which is up 41% since 2000.

Small, sweet as candy, little strawberries that you can grow from seed. photo PBH

This little table top garden provides fresh herbs for my cooking all winter. A sprig of fresh basil or parsley will add sparkle to any dish.

In the spring, I start seeds in the AeroGarden. Last spring I had great success getting tiny sweet strawberries to grow from seed. Picking these tiny French Alpine strawberries (fragaria vesca) are like finding candy in the garden. Buy strawberry seed at Renee’s Garden.

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Time for Four o’clocks


2011
07.28

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Posted in Herb Companion, Herbs in the garden, Home Garden, My Back Yard, Oh Grow Up!, Ozarks Travel Examiner | 1 Comment »

Many people have memories of four-o’clocks in their family garden. These beautiful flowers have been popular plants for generations.

photo Renees Garden

Four-o’clocks (Mirabilas jalapa) self seed. Often you can find them still growing in a long-abandoned garden spot. It’s an old Southern tradition to plant them near the front door. These jasmine-scented flowers will greet your guests.

In South America, where these flowers originated, four-o’clocks are used as a dye. The root is used medicinally and is said to be a hallucinogen. In herbal medicine, parts of the plant may be used for diuretic, purgative or vulnerary (wound-healing) purposes. I can’t speak for any of these herbal or medicinal uses—I have only enjoyed the flowers and their fragrance.

I’ve also read that the flowers are used in food coloring. The leaves may be cooked and eaten as well, but only as an emergency food. An edible crimson dye is obtained from the flowers to color cakes and jellies.

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Four-o’clocks are also also known as the ‘Marvel of Peru’.
Photo courtesy Renee’s Garden

Four-o’clock ‘Broken Colors’ are a special variety with starry, 2-inch blossoms that are beautifully splashed with showy, contrasting colors. Their delicio7-26-2011-renee's garden four o'clocksus jasmine fragrance floats on summer breezes. These flowers are both easy to grow and reliable. You can find the seeds on Renee’s Garden’s website for $2.79 a packet.

Before planting, soak the seeds in water overnight to speed the sprouting. These flowers are trouble-free, love full sun and have only moderate watering requirements.

Your four-o’clock flowers probably won’t bloom at exactly 4 p.m. Mine bloom at about 6 o’clock. The blooming time depends on your time zone and the plants’ exposure, but whenever it blooms it will stay consistent. You can count on your flowers to bloom at the same time every day. However, if it is cloudy or rainy, it may throw their solar clock askew.

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The Great Sunflower Project


2011
05.26

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Posted in Herb Companion, Herbs in the garden, Home Garden, Oh Grow Up! | No Comments »

Herb gardeners know how important bees are to our gardens. One of every three bites of food we eat come from a plant pollinated by wild pollinators. Unfortunately many pollinators are declining. That’s what the Great Sunflower Project wants to change. 

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Grow sunflowers to attract butterflies, bees and finches. Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

The Great Sunflower Project, a project that plans to unravel the mystery of the disappearing pollinators, pulls together data that you help them collect. With this data it will create a database to help understand what is happening to the bee pollinators and how our green spaces are connected. Sunflowers is an easy-to-grow plant that gives height to the herb garden and is wildy attractive to birds and bees.

• Sign up and plant your sunflowers.
• Watch your sunflower for 15 minutes: Write down how long it takes for the first five bees to arrive at your sunflower. After 15 minutes, you can stop. If you haven’t seen 5 bees by then, the Great Sunflower Project want to know!
• Enter your data online.

By watching and recording the bees at these sunflowers, you can help with the research the Great Sunflower Project is doing to understand the challenges that bees are facing. Grow annual ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflowers (Helianthus anus). I got mine from Renee’s Garden. ‘Lemon Queen’ is a lovely branching variety that is particularly attractive to bees. Other herbs that bees are attracted to include basils, borage, catmint, lavender and rosemary.

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Win ’Lemon Queen’ sunflower seeds and participate in the Great Sunflower Project. Photo by Rhonda Fleming hayes/Courtesy Flickr

Win ’Lemon Queen’ sunflower seeds and participate in the Great Sunflower Project.
Photo by Rhonda Fleming hayes/Courtesy Flickr

Seed Packet Giveaway

Renee’s Garden is giving away three packets of ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflowers to three lucky blog readers.

HOW TO ENTER

• Post a comment in the comments section below telling us why you grow, or why you want to grow, sunflowers.

• End date: June 1, 2011 (12:00 a.m. Central Time)

Good luck!

 

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What is Succession Planting?


2011
02.15

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Posted in Herbs in the garden, Home Garden, My Back Yard, Oh Grow Up! | 1 Comment »

Stretch your garden harvest by planting the same crop ten days later, and then again in ten more days.

lettuce and spinach will be suceeded by pepper plants

Another method is to replace one crop with another. For example, I’ll plant spinach in the early spring. As the weather gets warmer, I’ll plant green beans where the spinach was. I’ll plant half the row, and then, ten days later, I’ll finish planting the row with more green beans. Later, I’ll plant turnips in the row that grew green beans.

This method of gardening maximises your garden space. Even a tiny garden or big container can be used in this way.

Early peas will be replaced with green beans

Renee’s Garden has one of the most productive guides to using and reusing your garden space.

Renee’s Kitchen Garden Design Plans designed to maximize space.

Renee’s FAQs site gives you an organic gardeners short and sweet answer, not a science lecture. Her site is especially helpful on ferilizing and storing seed.

Zoning In

Find your plant hardiness zone. Use this guide to buy plants and learn when to sow seeds. I think the line between 6a and 6b runs right through my front yard. Depending on the investment – how much money I spend on the tree or plant -  I go back and forth, my answer could be different on any given day. I live in zone 6a. Or is it  6b?

US National Arboretum “Web Version” of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

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A Garden Lovers Valentine


2011
01.23

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Posted in Gifts, Herb Companion, Herbs in the garden, Herbs in the kitchen, Home Garden, My Back Yard, Oh Grow Up! | 1 Comment »

These are the kind of flowers a gardener loves to get:

Shirley poppies are a fragrant heirloom

Valentine’s Day Special at Renee’s Garden 20% off through Feb. 14 on selected “lover-ly”  flowers  that are sure to win the heart of that Special Someone.

I, of course, went a little nuts ordering Shirley Poppies, “Falling in Love” (Papaver rhocas) because I think you can never have too many poppies. There are other selections in this sale, including a fragrant heirloom sweet pea.

Most new or inexperienced gardeners wait too long before they plant poppies. In my zone 6 garden, I will sow poppies in Feb or March. I direct sow these teeny, tiny seed in the garden two months before  tomatoes.

http://www.reneesgarden.com

Oh, attention sweethearts everywhere: though it is a loving gesture, the purchase of flower seeds does not let one off the hook for chocolate.

See you in Renee’s Community Garden.

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Infuse Ratatouille With French Thyme


2010
08.18

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Posted in Herb Companion, Herbs in the garden, Herbs in the kitchen | No Comments »

Ratatouille Time

My garden is bursting with the main ingredients for Ratatouille, a chunky French stew. While you may not be thinking of stew in the heat of the summer, this rich vegetable stew will warm your soul this winter.

French peasant food

What to do when the garden explodes

Ratatouille is a delicious way to preserve a lot of produce fast. It is even more flavorful reheated the next day. Use the following herbs and vegetables.

Herbs: rosemary, parsley, thyme, oregano, bay, garlic

Vegetables: onions, bell peppers zucchini, eggplants, tomatoes

Herbs are a must for Ratatouille, especially French thyme.

Basic Ratatouille
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large bell pepper
• 1 medium eggplant
• 2 or 3 large tomatoes
• 2 zucchinis

1. Coursley chop vegetables into bite-size portions.

2. Saute onions in a little olive oil, then add garlic.

3. Add bell pepper, eggplant, tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste.

4. Cook for 15 minutes.

5. To preserve, divide the remainder of the stew into quart freezer containers, label, cool and freeze.

Tips For Cooking Ratatouille

Fresh herbs add sparkle to ratatoille

+ I have plenty of fresh herbs at the peak of summer so I like to add a few herb sprigs to the dish early. Just remember to remove them before serving.

+ Add zucchini or another summer squash to your stew for something a little different.

+ Cook covered over medium heat for about 10 more minutes, or until vegetables are done to your taste. Remove from heat, salt and pepper, and add fresh chopped herbs.

+ On the first snow day of the winter, put a quart of frozen ratatouille in the crockpot on low. By dinner time, your house will smell like a French restaurant. Being snowed in with a big bowl of rich, summery Ratatouille is a privilege for any home gardener.

+ My basic Ratatouille recipe is under-seasoned. To spice it up, season it with Herbs de Provence or add a combination of rosemary, parsley, thyme and, maybe, a cube of your frozen homemade pesto.

+ In my basic recipe, I add several whole cloves of garlic, which is different than the traditional French version. If this isn’t your cup of tea, add a variety of squash, peppers or eggplants instead.

Add a variety of peppers for flavor.

+ Serve as a stew with crusty bread, or, for a hardier meal, serve over rice, egg noodles, pasta or a baked potato.

+ I like to make a large batch of this stew and turn off the heat when the Ratatouille is slightly under cooked. Then I add fresh herbs, stir and cover it for 10 minutes.


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It’s dill pickle season


2010
06.27

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Posted in Herb Companion, Herbs in the garden, Herbs in the kitchen | No Comments »

Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it’s a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at http://patsybell.com and read her travel writings at Ozarks Travel Examiner.

Best known for pickling, dill (Anethum graveolens) is also a good herb for succession planting. If making dill pickles is on your Summer To-Do List, try this variety: dill ‘Dukat’. This variety, which is bred in Denmark, has finely cut leaves that stay fresh longer than other varieties.

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Hanging herb garden hung by the window to grow in Brooklyn.
Photo by Dory Komfeld/Courtesy Flickr

I like this newer variety of dill. It is pretty enough to plant in a sunny flower garden and it’s more compact than taller, older varieties. This is one of the few herbs that I enjoy to use both the ferny leaves and the seeds. Those beautiful lacey leaves are often referred to as dill weed. After this member of the carrot family has bloomed and set seed, cut it and hang it upside down in a paper bag to collect seed.

8 June Caterpillar
While the black swallowtail butterfly is a caterpillar, it feeds on dill.
Photo by Ken Pomerance/Courtesy Flickr

I suggest that you start this plant from seed—it has a long tap root, which means that transplanting it will have limited success. Plant a few seeds every two weeks to extend your season of fresh dill and to grow more than you need to share with local butterflies. Grateful butterflies will enjoy finding this smaller, more compact variety in your garden and caterpillars will appreciate its ready supply. It’s a well known fact that dill (as well as parsley and fennel) will attract butterflies to your garden.

To preserve, freeze your dill plant by cutting the branches into sections short enough to fit into heavy plastic freezer bags. Do not chop the leaves into bits until it is ready to use. This will brighten the fragrance and flavor when you use it in any recipe. Dill will keep in the freezer for about six months.

8 June Dill and Garlic
Use dill and garlic to make homemade pickles.
Photo by Sarah Reid

Use dill for more than pickles and dilly beans. Try a little dill in a favorite biscuit recipe. If you are serving pre-made biscuits, brush a little dill-infused butter on them. Also, I couldn’t make potato salad without dill weed.

This dill seed is easy to find. I bought my seeds at Renee’s Garden, Burpee and Nichols Garden Nursery online catalogs; several other companies also sell dill seed. But if you don’t want to find them on your own, enter my garden giveaway!

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