June 14th photoLabyrinth Location: Outer border arc, about 10 o'clock
Vegetable: Swiss Chard
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22 (?)
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled, with well-rotted manure tilled in.
A side note about the construction of the yin-yang garden design: the lawn at the left of the photo above is transplanted sod, where I grassed a corner of the existing square garden. The topsoil went to fill new beds where I had taken out sod.
The chard has given us several small harvests of thinnings already. They're quite nice in a salad or a sandwich. The bed is due for a thinning again.
I'll try to thin out the plants that are growing flopped over at the base. I don't know why, but certain plants lie over sideways a bit and then turn up. In a wind, they get whipped around a lot (as I noticed while weeding in a very gusty spell yesterday), whereas other plants grow straight up and the wind doesn't seem to bother them. Something about planting depth? Soil disturbance after sprouting? Just luck?
6 comments:
Chard. It's not something that's ever made it onto my plate. Is it a salad green?
Swiss Chard, if that helps - it's usually more of a cooked green, similar to cooked spinach, but I like it in a salad when it's young. Garth's mom uses the ribs in relish. It is very tolerant of frost in the fall, sometimes staying green long after most of the rest of the garden. Trouble is, we don't eat a lot of cooked greens, so I always have far more chard than we will eat.
You can get a red-ribbed variety, too, that looks rather like rhubarb; adds some colour to the garden.
i grow rainbow chard - ribs of red and yellow and orange and white. quite lovely, but not,i think, a heritage variety.
if you like Greek food, chard makes a delicious replacement for the grape leaves (which aren't often seen in my neck of the woods) in Dolmades. just cut out the rib and roll with the filling like little cabbage rolls. tres delish.
My minimal encounters with Greek food have been very positive, so I went looking for a Dolmades recipe. Ooh - pine nuts - that looks so yummy!
my recipe is a little different... uses ground meat instead of pine nuts (but why not use BOTH... drool), and uses lots of black olives and fresh thyme and mint. i'll dig it up and send it to you.
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