August 2012
Season’s End Sale - 40% Off
Remaining
"Packed for 2012" Seeds
To take advantage of this offer, use our
special
"Seeds on Sale" Order Form
Order now while supplies last!
AVAILABLE NOW FOR FALL
PLANTING:
GARLIC AND SHALLOTS
Growing
great garlic is both easy and rewarding for beginning
and experienced gardeners alike. In most of the country,
garlic is planted in the fall by sowing the individual
cloves from whole heads of "seed garlic." Each clove
will sprout into a plant that resembles a big scallion,
then these seedlings are mulched and will overwinter to
then grow vigorously the next spring. The plant that
grows from each clove will produce a complete full head
of garlic at harvest – an always wonderful and rewarding
multiplying trick, courtesy of Mother Nature.
Our garlic stock comes from a small grower in
Bakersfield, California who raises top-quality "seed"
garlic heads to sell to other farmers and we are proud
to share his fine varieties. Each is sold in 1/2 lb.
quantities, consisting of 4-6 full heads, which you
break apart into 45-50 fat individual cloves of garlic
for planting.
View Garlic/Shallots for Fall Planting
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August in the Trial Garden This season we have been focusing on root vegetables because so many good cooks these days are using them to good advantage and we wanted to expand our offering of these nutritious and good tasting, versatile veggies. We finished up our trial of several Dutch varieties last month, and this month we just harvested these Japanese baby turnips. These little beauties are easy to grow and quick to mature, only taking about 45 days to harvest from seed. They are sweet and mild in flavor and can be quickly sautéed or cut in half and roasted whole. These speedy Asian turnips are a good choice to interplant with longer maturing varieties like carrots or beets. We are also growing a new carrot variety called Purple Sun, which is long and tapered with deep purple color throughout. After its first spring trial, we are growing it again for fall harvest and the germination looks great. We will look forward to roasting some this fall along with our parsnips when we harvest them. It's been a real treat to do a tasting of the first big harvest of 5 different alpine strawberry varieties. The taste and fragrance of the petite berries is just to die for. In this trial we have included an unusual pastel yellow variety from Germany which has a more delicate flavor with hints of pineapple. It been very popular with everyone who tried it, and now that we have a good source, we will be adding it in the future to the Renee’s Garden seed line. Finally, the long-awaited harvest of ripe tomatoes in the
trial garden has started. We look forward to trying all the new varieties in
different colors and forms. One of the first
heirlooms to ripen up for picking is the impressive ‘Giant Syrian.’ We
recently harvested the first colossal fruit and it weighed in at 1.5
pounds! This solid and meaty tomato has a full, sweet flavor. The huge
red fruits keep their green shoulders even when ripe. Now that we have fallen
in love with their flavor, we'll have to see what the yield is like and
how the plants hold up over the season. |
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Best Wishes, |
What's On Renee's Blog
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Recipe of the Month
Garlic lovers will adore this recipe |
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