Chard

Last year was the first I ever grew swiss chard in my garden, and I have to say that it's probably here to stay. Beautiful, nutritious, tolerant of heat -- it just did so well for me.

I can now add "quite tolerant of cold" to its list of attributes, as my chard plants overwintered with just a thin frost blanket covering them all winter. I didn't know how they'd fare this way, but it's time to find out.

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They didn't look perfect -- lots of brown leaves to clean out:

Looking past the brown though, most of the plants looked green, healthy -- just great!

After removing the dead and dying leaves, you can see that things are looking good:

The compost pile will be happy to get some more "greens":

Down at this end of the bed the plants don't look as good. Lots of stems showing, not as much fresh foliage:

I'll see what happens though. Last year's kale looked like this after the winter and it sprouted from the stem once it warmed up. I'm interested to see how these do.

There's plenty of healthy growth at the other end of the bed though!

As somebody who's always struggled a bit with the veggie garden, it looks like I've finally figured a few things out. Is this the year I'll not be disappointed with my food crop?

Doesn't it look delicious?

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