Sunshine!

[velvetpage]

And warmth! It's absolutely gorgeous outside! There are rainbows dancing all through my front hall, stairs, and kitchen (from the sun refracting in the bevelled glass of my front door.) In about half an hour, when I get Piet up, I'm going to throw on some clothes, grab a stool and some sort of large mixing implement (I'm woefully under-supplied when it comes to gardening tools) and a jug of water, and I'll prepare the soil in my urn to receive seeds. If there's enough soil and it looks good enough to me, I'll plant my first two swiss chard seeds. The rainbow ones haven't arrived yet, but I have some plain white ones that will do for the first two plants.

I'm going to be watching that urn the way eight-year-olds watch styrofoam cups full of dirt and a pumpkin seed.

Hopefully by next Saturday, my rainbow chard seeds will have arrived, so I can follow the advice on the packet and plant the seeds a week or so apart, thereby ensuring continuous supply all summer. And I have to remember to leave room for the cress seeds I ordered. I'm going to plant those around the rim.

After six years in this house, I'm finally planting something!

Comments

[merlyn4401.livejournal.com]

Yay for warm spring days and planting veggies! Woot!

Plant four

[catsarah.livejournal.com]

I'd actually advise you to plant four seeds rather than two and cull whichever aren't the most vigorous plants (and just in case one of the two you planted is a dud). If the point is to have one plant, then ignore this comment ;3

How do you eat your chard btw? My mother taught me to lightly steam, then chop it up on my plate, add a little salt, pepper, butter and vinegar (which I've since changed to lemon juice). Urf! Makes me hungry for chard now!

Re: Plant four

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Mostly I add it to spaghetti sauce or mashed potatoes. I'm going to write down that recipe though - it sounds yummy. Chard, and for that matter the other leafy greens that have to be cooked, are on the list of foods I've recently learned to cook with.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

That is the craziest planting advice I have ever heard. Swiss chard is a cut-and-come-again plant. You don't pull it out by the roots to harvest it, you snap off the outer leaves, and within a week, they've grown back. Four swiss chard plants, planted at once, will last all summer long.

But, if you want a good mix of colours, plant 8, and then pull out the ones that aren't in interesting colours. The colour is obvious as soon as the seedlings are about two inches tall.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

Lettuce, though, you want to replant every two weeks. Maybe they use a standard label for all green leafy vegetables?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

In that case, I will plant the rest tonight, because my rainbow chard seeds just arrived in the mail. Yay for new seeds!