Swiss Chard

I really love my Swiss chard.

1. I love the way it grows so happily in mostly-shady situations. Some of mine grows where it only gets about 3 hours of sunlight a day.  

   

   Swiss chard growing beside my house. It only gets
   about 3 hours of sunlight, and that in the afternoon.

2. I love the taste of it.
3. I love that in my Southern garden, I can grow it most of the year.
4. I love that Swiss chard is pretty enough to grow in the front yard garden. 

The only time I can't grow Swiss chard is when it is going to seed. Luckily, this year, my son's Junior Master Gardeners group took the Swiss chard they had growing out and I was able to plant this plant to tide me over until the seeds come in and my baby Swiss chard plants are big enough to harvest.

Swiss chard given to our family by the leaders of the Junior Master Gardeners

Swiss chard going to seed. 

Baby Swiss chard in the garden. 

In the Garden Now April 2014

Occasionally, I post pictures of the way the garden looks right now. The last time I did this was May 1, 2013.

It was a hard winter, and many of my garden plants died. I also added many things to our little property. I think it's time for another one.

The Butterfly Garden by the front door. Notice the butterfly stepping stones
my kids painted and the old bird bath at the back of the picture. That
old bird bath has been painted and contains two types of mint.
The green in the front left is all Easter lilies. The green in the badk
left is lemon balm. 

 

I added the border to this bed a couple weeks ago. The green at the top
is oregano (with dianthus in the middle). The rest of the bed had
to be completely replanted. I lost everything that was here. It has
daffodils, renunculus, freesias, echinacea from Melissa at Ever Growing Farm, and some
baby zinnias.

The most up-to-date view of the peach tree with the new strawberry bed. 

Braeburn apple. 

Paw Paw tree. 

Pineapple guava.

 Do you think this pineapple guava will live? It's hard to tell from the picture, but there is a lot of brown on the older leaves. I covered it every time it got even moderately cold, but it still looks very burned and weak.

Hazelnut tree. 

The newly added garden beds. The orange you can see
is potato grow bags. 

 The hazelnuts, pawpaw trees and the pineapple guavas are all really small. I have the tomato trellises around them to keep the kids and their friends from stepping on them.

Before and After: The New Strawberry Patch

Peach tree in my front yard before the addition of the strawberry
bed underneath it.

Peach tree in my front yard after the addition of the strawberry bed
underneath it. 

A close up on one of  the strawberry plants

My husband asked me to plant something under the peach tree so that he would not have to mow under the low-hanging limbs. I pondered it since last year and asked some other gardeners. I finally decided that a strawberry bed would be a nice addition.

I bought fifty strawberry plants from Pinetree Seeds.* They came last week, so I worked (and worked and worked) on the weeds in order to create a bed for them. I am not the greatest at circular math, so I cut 2 strings, one eight inches long and the other eighteen inches long. The eight inch long one was used to measure between plants and the 18 inch long one was used to measure between rows. I did one row at a time, planting the plants in that row, because I couldn't figure out on paper the exact amount of weeds I would have to pull. I would lay the 18 inch piece on the last row and the put the 8 inch piece to the side of the last plant I had planted. Then I would know where to plant the next one. It ended up looking circular, with 3 circular rows, so I guess it worked.

In case you weren't aware, planting under a tree is harder than planting in open soil. First, you can't stand up. Second, you can't just use a shovel or you will damage the tree. Third, you can't just dump a pile of dirt over the top and create a raised bed or you will damage the tree by burying it too deep.

So, I crawled around on my hands and knees for hours at a time, digging with a trowel to prepare the bed. (Oh, my back!)

The plants came looking like dead little thing with long roots. But after one watering they greened up like you see in the above photo.

It was a lot of work, more than I actually anticipated, but I am really happy with the result.

I am going to mulch with pine bark, add some round pavers to be able to reach the peaches, and edge it with some nice concrete edging. It is in the front yard, so I want it to look as nice as possible.



*(The link to Pinetree Seeds is not affiliate. I just liked their products and have been very happy with them as a company. I plan to shop with them again.)

The Garden Right Now

I don't post as much as I used to.

I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures of the garden right now, though.

This is my front yard garden by the garage. This is also my favorite
garden. Currently, it has some red flowered fava beans, milkweed,
cardinal's cap, celosia, and nasturtiums in it. Along the trellis are
green beans, vining nasturtiums and passion vines. 

This is the Twenty Foot Garden. In front of the box, is Swiss Chard.
In the garden box itself, I have Ruth Bible beans and Lousiana
Purple Podded Pole beans, regular and cherry tomatoes, a
Tromboncino zucchini, 6 cucumbers, 24 okra in 3 varieties and
Mississippi Cream peas. 

This is the bed by the front door. I have Easter lilies coming up
everywhere, but they haven't bloomed yet this year. There is lemon
balm and thyme in the bed and the purple things are ornamental
cabbages. The bird bath on the ground is for butterflies. They use
wet sand to get their drinks and salt intake. 

Comparison of the Heirloom Beans I Grew 2012 Part 2

As I said in my previous post, this year I decided to grow several different types of heirloom beans. What I wanted was to find at least one bean that I loved enough to plant every year and save my own seeds.

I grew Scarlet Runner beans, Mississippi Cream peas, Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, Lazy Wife beans, Good Mother Stallard beans, Ruth Bible beans, Louisiana Purple Pod Pole beans and Trail of Tears beans.  I reviewed the Scarlet Runner beans, the Mississippi Cream peas, the Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, the Lazy Wife beans and the Ruth Bible beans in the previous post. 

Good Mother Stallard Beans for seed

Good Mother Stallard beans: These are common beans. They will cross with other common beans, but not with cowpeas or scarlet runner beans. By the time I got around to planting these beans I had grown weary of counting beans, so I only counted the number of seeds I saved. The harvest was not very large for the amount of beans I planted, but I did get enough beans for seed. for spring. I saved 187 beans for seed in spring.

With these beans I like the flavor so much that I threw out the productivity component. I plan to plant them in spring even though production was very low compared to the other varieties I tried. The leaf rollers and the bugs that eat the seeds did attack this planting much more heavily than any of the other beans I planted all year long. That may play into the low number.

According to a post on the Seed Savers Exchange forum, one should expect 120 beans per bean planted. I got substantially less than that. I planted 40 beans, and about 28 of them grew. If the expected harvest worked, I should have gotten something on the line of 3360 beans. I got 187.

I am going to plant them again in the spring in another location. I really like these beans and want to use them for dried beans. They have a rich, meaty flavor that is so good that I served my family beans and cornbread and that is all for supper when I was taste testing the beans. (I ordered several varieties from Rancho Gordo, because I wanted to taste beans to see if there was anything outstanding enough that I should plant it.)

I hope for a better return if I plant them in another location. I have to have about 800 seeds to make a pound of Good Mother Stallard beans. I don't know if I will be able to get what I need to have meals of these beans or not. I guess if worst comes to worst, I can order them from Rancho Gordo.  I hope to work it out so that I can grow my own.

Lousiana Purple Podded Pole beans

Louisiana Purple Podded Pole bean flowers-- a stunning two-
tone purple 

Louisiana Purple Podded Pole Beans: These are common beans. They won't cross with cowpeas, or  runner beans, but they will cross with any other common bean. These were the last beans I planted this year. I planted them on a whim, because I had just purchased the seed and was excited to see how they grow. I planted them so late that I am sure I didn't get a good reading on productivity.

I didn't bother to count the beans of this variety, either. I did get to taste them. They are wonderful. They are also exceptionally beautiful. The stems are a deep, stunning purple. The leaves are bright green. The flowers are a gorgeous two-tone purple. Surprisingly, the flowers have a scent, a wonderful flowery aroma. They would be a great addition to a front yard garden, where they would work great as edible landscaping. They are vining plants, so you would need a trellis, but that can be done tastefully.

I planted 40 of them and about 20 grew. I was able to save a little bit of seed from my own garden and have some seed left over from that I purchased from Seed Savers Exchange. I definitely plan to have these in my garden next year. I love the color. I love the taste. I love the flowers, and the form of the plants. I love that the flowers have a scent. They are rather rare, so it will be a pleasure to help maintain a variety that is threatened. I hope to have a bigger planting next year.

Summary: I learned what type of beans my family likes and what types produce the best for us. The best producer was by far the Ruth Bible beans. The best tasting green bean for our family was the Louisiana Purple Podded Pole beans. The whole family agreed that their flavor was superior to the others. The best story definitely came from the Mississippi Cream peas. The most unique flavor was the taste of the Good Mother Stallard beans. 

So, next spring's bean choices are made. I will plant Ruth Bible beans, Louisiana Purple Podded Pole beans, Mississippi Cream peas and Good Mother Stallard beans. Now to organize my garden so that each bean is isolated enough to give me pure seed. 

Passion Fruit Vines Both Red and Purple

Some of you may remember the story I posted back in April, when Dot Dot gave us Passion Fruit Vines.
Well, I had to pull all of my Scarlet Runner plants. Between the 15 inches of rain and the winds we received during Tropical Storm Debby, they were toast. They just looked terrible.

In a way, I was sad to see them go, because they attracted hummingbirds, but they really looked too sloppy for the front yard.

With the Scarlet Runners out, you can see the Passion Fruit Vines pretty clearly. I am pretty excited about it, because the two taller vines are red flowered Passion Fruit Vines. The center one that you can see in the second picture is purple. And all of them are really healthy looking. Dot Dot even told me that they look as if they will flower soon! Yay! (I'll take pictures of their beautiful flowers, if I get any.)

The vining plants to the back of the picture are Red Flowered
Passion Fruit Vines to the left and Purple Flowered Passion Fruit
Vines to the right. They have different types of leaves. The purple
ones have three pronged leaves. 

On My Mind-- Scarlet Runners

I harvested a dinner plate full of Scarlet Runner beans. They were big--as long as my children's heads. They felt like the beans were mature inside. When I peeled them (which was no easy feat, by the way), the beans were still teeny. I ended up with about 2 tablespoons of beans. They tasted okay when I cooked them, but that is really a lot of trouble for not much.

Later, I harvested some of the smaller beans and tried them as green beans. They feel sticky on the tongue, even after cooking. It was quite uncomfortable for me.

They have been coming in almost daily, but I can't bear to eat them. I don't like them shelled and I don't like them cooked like green beans. Now I am dithering about what to do with these plants. I like the beauty of the flowers. I like that hummingbirds and bumblebees stop by and drink nectar from them. But the taste appalls me.

I pulled all the Scarlet Runner Beans from my Twenty Foot Garden. I decided that they weren't worth the space back there. I just don't know what to do with the ones in the front yard garden.