From the studios of Rodale Institute Radio and Television at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another "edumacational" hour of chemical-free horticultural hijinks.

You Bet Your Garden.

Do you need to start pea and bean seeds indoors for the coming season?

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and on today's show we'll reveal how to successfully harvest a bumper crop of peas and beans.

Plus, long time seen slinger Renee Shepherd joins us to talk about seed sowing success.

And, of course, your phone call questions, comments, tips, suggestions and seriously sanguine solicitations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you eating your first peas before we exit the merry month of May.

Right after this.

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Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of Rodale Institute Radio and Television at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up a little later in the show, we'll be discussing peas and beans, both legumes but with very significant differences in how and when you plant them.

But speaking of planting, it is time to welcome my dear friend and one of the best seed slingers in the business, Renee Shepherd, who is the head honcho of Renee's Garden, which provides some of the highest quality seeds to us gardeners around the country.

Welcome back to You Bet Your Garden, Renee.

- Thanks very much, Mike, it's a pleasure to be here.

- Here, there, wherever.

- We are everywhere, we're in the cloud.

At least I am half the time.

All right.

You go back to an era before I was even in this business, and that is simply to state that you have been personally selecting seeds of dynamite varieties for quite a long time.

My first memory of coming across your line of seeds is that you were proud of...

I know edibility is not the exact correct word, but that you had trialed these things, you had tasted them, and theoretically you couldn't find a better tasting string bean, tomato, bell pepper, whatever.

- Oh, you mean why I got started?

- Yeah.

- OK.

Yes, look, I have been for many, many years, as you point out, looking for vegetables.

Then we certainly got into wonderful flowers too.

But vegetables that are easy to grow, productive and most importantly great in the kitchen.

So our line of seeds has always been based on things that are really good to eat and cook with.

And so we trial everything first in our gardens here in Northern California, we're in the hills, so we get a lot of frost, gets down to mid 20s.

But then if we like something, we trial it in Vermont to make sure it'll grow in a really cold climate.

But the criteria is, does it taste good?

Is it better than other varieties?

Is it nutritious?

And then we cook with it to make sure all that is true on the plate.

- And as part of these trials, you have discovered my absolute favorite tomato.

I mean, 35 years in this business and I never experienced a tomato like yours.

I keep screwing up the name.

Tasmanian Chocolate?

- That's right.

And that was basically bred by the Dwarf Tomato Project, which is an organization of volunteers.

And I think there's two, but my information's vague, so I may not be correct... - All of my information is vague!

- But it's an organization, a group of people who really works on container varieties.

- But the thing that literally blew me away because, you know, there's a lot of promises made in catalogs and seed packets, and I should mention to our listeners and watchers who I hope are seeing images of your seed packets right now, that the illustration, all of your seed packets are beautiful watercolors or other types of color art that really just, I mean, make you want to plant the thing that's inside, and I'm looking and I'm going, right.

this bush is going to be three feet high and it's going to give me tomatoes the size of a child's head.

All right.

I got to see how this works out.

And they are as big as almost any tomato I've grown.

And they are the most respectful vines.

It's almost like they bred the vine out of it.

It is an upright plant, unlike myself.

It doesn't fall down.

And you get such a yield from a container.

And I grew, I've been growing yours for years.

You know, I'm emailing you every January saying, hey, I want more Tasmanian whatevers, you know, and it is totally... endorsed of this tomato.

I endorse this tomato.

Somehow there's an endorsement in this tomato and I'm in the middle.

But that's what it is.

- Well, I'm really glad you like it.

We have some good pictures on our website.

The pictures on the packets are watercolors painted by Mimi Osborne, our packet artist.

And we send her pictures of the varieties that we take in our trial garden and then she paints their portraits.

So that's how that comes together.

But I'm really glad you like that one.

It is one of my favorites, too, because it's very reliable, really pretty and delicious.

I agree with you.

- And I should mention also about your seed packets that they contain much more information than the seed packets that you get from most companies.

Do they all have that, like, little pull tab where it opens up into a little story book that gives you more information?

- Well, as you know, Mike, I used to have a print catalog.

Now we are totally online.

And when I went to online, I still wanted to write catalog descriptions of each variety because I've personally grown them and know why I chose them and I wanted to share that.

So our packets have a little extra flap attached to the back.

It has an 80 word description for each packet and then myself and our trial garden manager, Lindsay, we write all the packet backs ourselves based on our growing experience and feedback, and we do change them as things change or as we learn anything different.

So I try to make our packet backs the best possible I can in 237 words, which is the limit, but I aim them toward people who do not have a lot of experience gardening and try to provide everything you'll know to be successful.

- So you're handholding, which is always a good idea.

Which brings me to the thought that this previous year, 2020, the year that we would all like to return at the department store and get a lousy looking tie or something for, many new gardeners jumped into the game.

And almost everyone else I've spoken to says their seed and plant business went through the roof.

Did your company, Renee's Garden, experience the same rise in sales?

- Everybody in the seed business and everybody in the plant business experienced a huge surge very quickly, and it wasn't like there was a seed shortage.

It was just that seed companies like mine and all of us project how many packets we need to fill every year.

And last year we had filled to the number of packets we expected with some extra for hoped-for growth.

And then with the surge, we all used up all the packets we had.

So all of us are prepared with more filled packets this year.

But I think it's going to be a very good idea to buy seeds early because we're starting to experience a lot of pressure on our inventory early.

And there isn't like there's a worldwide seed shortage, there's just a worldwide demand.

And the logistics for where seeds are produced, which is all over the world, is difficult because it's hard - to bring enough in.

- Yeah.

Isn't it weird to be in this business for 30, 40 years and suddenly become an overnight success?

- It is a strange and wonderful experience, but it's a silver lining to a very black situation.

- Absolutely.

Now, what kind of bird is in the background?

- Oh, that's Wazoo, my cockatiel.

- OK, they never shut up, do they?

- No.

He's really elderly, but he is not any more quiet with a hitch.

- Well, there you go.

That's two of us, me and him.

OK, so one thing I did tell you when I asked you to be on the show today is I've been getting these mailings that this is the year of the sunflower.

You know, every year some anonymous group, the Illuminati or somebody, pick a flower of the year.

And this year it's sunflowers, which are one of my absolute favorite plants to grow.

Before we get into them, I want to mention, because I'm supposed to be the "edumacator" here, that there are basically two kinds of sunflowers.

There are what are called the oil sunflowers, maybe the Russian mammoth sunflowers.

And these are the ones that are six to eight feet tall with the giant heads that always face towards the sun and produce edible seeds for humans and especially birds.

There's no better way to feed the birds than to grow these gigantic sunflowers.

But my favorites are the little guys, so to speak, ornamental sunflowers that range in height from, I believe, just a minuscule six inches to maybe even five, six feet in height.

And the diversity is just astounding.

Talk to us about the ornamental varieties.

- Well, you're right.

I mean, oil sunflowers are a huge crop for their oil all over the world, and they're grown in tons and tons and tons and tons.

Ornamental sunflowers also, it's a miniscule percentage of the sunflowers grown throughout the world, but they're important because they're wonderful ornamental flowers and they attract lots of pollinators.

And they come in, as you say, many different heights, branching ones.

There's also some tall hybrids of the single large single flower that you were talking about, similar to mammoth, but maybe even taller with huge flowers.

So there's a wide range of forms and types.

So you can grow them in pots.

You can grow maybe miniature ones in containers that are three feet tall.

You can grow a hedge that's five feet tall.

You can have single flowers, so branching flowers, and sunflowers come in every shade of red and orange and brown and burgundy.

And there's a lot of bi colors ones that might have yellow rays and then a circle of red or vice versa, red outer rays and then a circle of yellow.

And some have green centers to start and then they turn brown.

I mean, it's just a very diverse and very old family.

You know, sunflowers originate from South America back centuries and centuries ago.

- Peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, sunflowers, any of these crops that we consider warm weather crops you don't plant by the date.

Wait till you get to a reasonable date and then look at the ten day forecast.

And if you see a low 40 in there, sit on your hands because you're going to get better results if you wait than if you rush the season.

- Well, I think that's becoming more and more true.

You know, 40, 50 years ago, prostates were more reliable.

That's changing.

So peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are the seeds everyone all over the country starts indoors.

Sunflowers, if you wait till the nights are in the 55 degree range, you can plant them directly or you can start them in advance.

So, and I agree that thinning is one of the hardest things to do, but it's a good argument for having a compost pile, because if you have to thin out extra seedlings, at least you can use them to nourish future one.

And two, if you leave, sunflowers are a good example, you leave them all tangled together, plant them too closely, they won't thrive.

They'll be more susceptible to pests.

In other words, you're torturing them.

It's the most evident with sunflowers about thinning, because when you do plant them out or when you sow seeds, you sow them about six inches apart and then you thin back to stand a foot apart.

And you say that seems very strange when they're about three or four inches tall because sunflowers, to get strong, thick stocks and big root systems, need to have space to stretch out and grow.

So that's the important thing about the most vigorous, healthy sunflowers, is to thin them out so they stand ten or 12 inches apart, which seems very counterproductive but really works.

- It is one of the hardest things that I try to get across to people.

I've actually seen good research that shows when you have Siamese twin tomatoes in one of your six packs or something like that, that when the roots intertwine, they pick up the signal that there's plenty of tomatoes in the area and so they don't have to produce as much.

- Well, you know, I think with sunflowers, a lot of them will come up.

And if you don't thin them out, they're going to compete with each other.

They will be more susceptible to everything that comes along and you'll never get the same results.

I know it's really hard.

With many plants, you can dig up the extra seedlings, and sunflowers if you start them in the soil when they're a couple inches tall, you certainly can dig up the extra ones and plant them up and give them away or plant them elsewhere, or else you can simply compost them.

But it's really important to have proper spacing and great air circulation for the best sunflowers.

- And I'm going to ask you to mention a couple of your favorite varieties.

But one thing we should mention is this kind of staggered planting situation, much like spring bulbs.

It's not that difficult, even for a beginning gardener who waits till the soil is warm enough and the nights are warm enough to put a front row of six inch tall sunflowers, then a foot behind it, one-footers, and then behind that two-footers and without essentially having any skill.

So you don't even need opposable thumbs for this.

You create this beautiful garden bed that's going to make everybody smile who sees it.

- Well, I agree, and you can also do that with different easy to plant seeds so you have different flowers.

You could plant nasturtiums in front, which would mount and spread, zinnia plants, which would get two to three feet tall, and then behind it a row of tall sunflowers.

And those all will make hummingbirds and bees happy, all feed the songbirds and then feed your heart - with lots of beauty.

- All right.

It has been a pleasure chatting with you, Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden there on the web at reneesgarden.com.

Right?

No apostrophe.

- That's right.

No, there has an apostrophe.

- Are you sure?

- But the web address, yes, no punctuation.

- Right.

And great seeds, beautiful packets, very high quality.

And although she doesn't like to hear me say it, one of the pioneers of the real quality end of the seed business.

And it's great to still have you with us.

Ladies and gentlemen, Renee Shepherd!

- Thanks.

Thanks, Mike.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I mean that, and I am a perennially big fan of yours.

So thanks.

By the way, I just reread your tomato book.

It really holds up well.

It's excellent.

- Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah.

That tomato book and the compost book.

I'm really happy with the way those came out.

Well, thank you so much, Renee, thank you for being with us and we'll get you back - on real soon.

- OK, sounds good.

Thanks.

- Yes, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling peas and beans, to start or not to start?

That is the question.

The person who asks the question is Jeanine, who writes: Well, to quote the all-knowing internet, Washington growing zones are wide-ranging and can be anywhere from 4A to 9A, although much of the state falls into the range of 6A on the eastern half of the state to 9A on the western side.

Now, zone 6A is pretty common across the country.

My garden in Pennsylvania is either a 6A or a 6B.

Now, Bs are a little warmer than As, but they're not quite the next zone up.

Higher zone numbers indicate warmer wintertime lows, while low numbers mean it gets darn cold in the winter, darn cold.

Luckily, I don't need to know Jeanine's exact location as the point with these crops is, as they say, moot.

I don't know why they say it.

They just do, OK?

Peas and beans are direct sown, meaning that you plant the seeds right in the ground as opposed to starting them inside like tomatoes and peppers.

They are also both legumes, which means that if they come into contact with the right types of soil bacteria, they gain the ability to feed themselves with nitrogen from the air, which is wicked cool, wicked.

You can buy the correct bacteria, which is called an inoculant, at your friendly neighborhood garden center.

Now, that's all they got in common, because peas are a cool weather springtime crop and beans are a warm weather crop of the summer, like them tomatoes and peppers we just mentioned.

Now, all types of peas, whether they're snap peas, snow peas or English shelling peas, will wither and die right around the same time life gets good for green beans, which makes timing of the peas extremely important.

Virtually all varieties of peas have a days to maturity rating of between 50 to 70 days, which in most regions means giving them all of April and May to grow with you getting all of June to pick and enjoy.

Here in the east, many gardeners believe that planting your peas on St Patrick's Day is good luck, which it is not if there's still snow and/or frozen soil in your garden.

But the timing does make sense as St Patrick's Day falls on March 17th this year.

And if you plant in soil that is not frozen, that planting date could have you picking peas in late May.

But you only get one shot at this crop each year.

And so we will explain how you can cheat your way into pea heaven.

And as we always like to remind our younger listeners, remember, kids, cheaters always win.

Here's the deal.

Select the bed in which you will plant your pea seeds and remove any mulch covering the soil to allow that soil to warm up faster.

It would also not be wrong to cover that bed with a one or two mil thick sheet of clear plastic to further the path to warm soil.

Then we will not start our seeds the tomato and pepper way, but we will pre sprout them.

About a week after you start warming that soil, take your pea seeds, which are big and easy to handle, and put them into Ziploc bags with enough moist paper towels to cover all the seeds.

Now, do not zip the bag shut, just fold them over and place them out in the open in a warm room.

Check the seeds daily.

If there's no sign of moisture in the bag, add a little water or, even better, use a mister.

Or a Ms. After five to seven days, you should see little squiggles coming out of some of the seeds.

Now leave the bag open to prevent mold but keep misting gently.

Then when the planets are all aligned, most of your scenes have nice-size squiggles and the soil outside is workable, as in no longer frozen, plant your pre sprouted seeds.

If you have that inoculant we talked about at hand, dust it into the planting holes or rows right along with the seats.

With the seeds.

With the seeds, not the seats.

The seeds.

Don't bury seats in your garden.

Put them there to sit down on.

What we're talking about are seeds.

Although the seeds would probably have rotted in the cold, wet soil of spring, the sprouted seeds and the plants to come don't mind cool weather.

In fact, they require it.

Yeah, but you're not done yet.

Some varieties will have the word bush associated with their name.

That means that these vines will top out at around two feet tall and require minimal support.

If they doesn't say bush, they will need to be trellised or they will collapse into an ungodly mess.

Check the packet seed catalog or website for their final height and respect it.

Then you wait.

When the first peas appear, pick them early.

The smallest pods taste the best, and not allowing the seeds to get too big inside the pods means the plants will keep producing prodigiously.

When the vines start to shrivel and die, pick what's left and clear that bed for a new crop like green beans, which need no pre sprouting because the soil is now nice and warm.

They will also say bush or pole again.

Respect their final height and those string beans, green beans and other kind of beans, they're going to persist until frost, as should you.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about having lots of peas in your pot now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your "leesure" or your "leshure", just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be youbetyourgarden.org Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week.

And you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

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Mike McGrath was created by William Cameron Menzies during the filming of Invaders from Mars.

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Yikes, my producer's threatening to sabotage my snow peas if I don't get out of this studio.

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I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and they haven't fired me yet, although God knows I've tried.

So I guess I and Ducky will see you all again next week.