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. 

You Can Always Cheat

If your seeds, little packages full of promise, don't live up to their promise, you can cheat. You can buy plants and plant them.

My spring seeds did great. My fall seeds--not so much. I planted broccoli twice. All of them died.

My cheat (please realize that I am joking. I don't really think it's cheating. I just wish the seeds had done well.)

Broccoli seedlings from the store. I am fighting a little bit of
purpling of the leaves, which is supposedly caused by a
need of bone meal (phosphorus, specifically). I have applied
bone meal. Do I need more?
 

I planted 100 onion seeds. All but 3 of them died. I bought sets at the store. (And forgot to photograph it.)

I planted Swiss chard twice. Only 2 came up. My "cheat".

Swiss chard by the Lincoln English peas. I have 7 more planted.
I hope they do well. I really want these this year. 

A couple years ago, I planted milkweed for the monarch butterflies. All of it died.
My "cheat."

Yellow flowers flopping over with the weight of their seedpods are
milkweed. Watch, I bet the seeds will have me overloaded
with volunteers. But the seedpods are so cool! I will have
to post pictures of them. Do you know that they gave children
money for collecting seed pods during World War 2? The seed
pods are so light that they used them to stuff life jackets for flyers, so they
paid children to collect them. Cool trivia, in my opinion.