Live from the Farm: Water Logged Chard

The rain recently has done wonders for the plants, but this swiss chard plant can’t take it.  I haven’t checked the actual count, but I’m guessing we received about 3 inches of rain today.  No flooding in the beds though.

Related articles:

1. Live from the Farm: Swiss Chard
2. On The Farm, June 26, 2009
3. In the Ground: Swiss Chard

If you’ve arrive here from Google hoping for a method to never water your garden, you’ll be disappointed to hear the answer is Mother Nature.

Here in Chicago, we’ve had a miserable spring for being outdoors but wonderful weather for the outdoors. In the last 10 days, we had an inch of rain (as reported at O’Hare Airport) spread perflectly across multiple days. Since Memorial Day, I haven’t had to pull out the hose at all.

Most plants would like a half inch to inch of water per week at this time of year (around 75 degrees). The weather has been a little cooler — the peppers are anxious for some heat — and the rain has been plenty to keep everything growing. Too much rain at any one time and the water runs off instead of soaks into the ground. Except for May 26th (almost 2 inches of rain), we haven’t had any heavy rains.

Mother Nature: Please keep up the regular half inch per week rain schedule. But maybe move it to the very early mornings.

Related articles:

1. Rain, Rain
2. Monitoring the Weather
3. Spring Status

Carrots

Carrots among the Garlic

The carrots were planted on a windy day.  Good news, they’ve seeded and are growing nicely.  Bad news, they aren’t all in the places that they were planted.  This happens and I don’t get too worried about it.  The picture above shows a carrot growing among the garlic plants.  It will be interesting growing two in-the-ground plants right next to eachother.  So far — so good.

Tomatoes

Tomato Plant, May 27, 2009

The tomato plants are looking good.  For the first time, I planted the plants in the order in which they’ll bloom (early season, mid-season, and late season).  Not suprisingly, the plants are growing at the same rate.  Above is an early season tomato plant which is growing considerably faster than the other tomato plants.  It’s hard to tell from the angle, but the plant is about a foot tall (the other plants are still in the 8 to 10 inch range).

Peppers

Peppers, May 27, 2009

The peppers are strong, but they haven’t been growing high.  Peppers thrive in heat (which is the reason no many people grow hot peppers in the Midwest — the hotter the pepper, the more heat and sun you need).  We’ve been averaging upper 60s for the past few weeks and the pepper plants need 80s.  I’m hoping the weather picks up a bit and they’ll start to take off.

Herbs

Parsley and Cilantro, May 27, 2009

Cilantro and parsley are tough herbs to start.  I’ve had many failed attempts at getting both to sprout and I’m happy to say there were no problems this year.  Above you’ll see a few solidly growing cilantro and italian parsley plants.  If you’ve never grown the two, it’s actually a little hard to tell them apart.  Usually the smell test works — cilantro has a strong distinct smell.  Please disregard my lack of weeding.  Honestly, I’ve made mistakes and pulled herbs instead of weeds so I like to give it just a little time to establish themselves to figure out whether it is a weed or not.

Peas

Peas, May 27, 2009

The spinach is also going strong.  I have three different stages of spinach growing right now.  The picture above is from the first batch.  I can start cutting each of these plants for some baby spinach, but I think I’m going to let it grow just one more week.  There is another set of plants about 2 weeks behind and then a third set which just popped out of the ground.

A good start and plenty more pictures to take and a couple of more seeds to get in the ground in the next week.

Related articles:

1. Peas, Spinach, Radishes and More…Growing
2. On the Farm, June 19, 2009
3. Friday Growing

I think people forget why April showers bring May flowers.  This weekend was a great example — Saturday was a great day to work in the garden.  Since then, we’ve had 2 great days of rain — .9 inches on Sunday and .16 on Monday.  That’s a full inch of rain.  With freshly planted seeds in the ground, the rain will keep the seeds moist and encourage the seeds to sprout.

Among many vegetables in the ground on this Saturday was Swiss Chard.  I’ve become a big fan of swiss chard after growing it.  It’s another real easy vegetable to grow.  Also called silverbeet, the leaves have a hint of beet flavor to them (they are in the same family as the beet).  Sauteed, chard tastes much like spinach.

The picture below shows the plants much further apart then I’ve planted them.  Since I’m using the square foot gardening principles, it will be grown tightly.  I plan to cut some leaves early for baby chard and let others grow out.  I’ve found chard doesn’t get bitter or change taste too much as it grows, so there is no need cut it too early.

Here is the description of the variety I’m growing:

Red Chard growing in the garden of Slow Food Nation, Photo by mercedesfromtheeighties

Five Color Silverbeet (Rainbow Chard)
60 days. A beautiful chard, its colors are brilliant (pink, yellow, orange, red and white). This chard originated in Australia. Very mild, ornamental, and tasty. Great for market growers and specialty markets. Pretty enough to plant in the flower garden, so delicious, one of our favorite greens! (Sold in stores as “Bright Lights”)

Related articles:

1. Live from the Farm: Swiss Chard
2. Live from the Farm: Water Logged Chard
3. On the Farm, June 19, 2009

Square Garden Plot, April 2009

This picture was taken this morning and shows one of the square foot gardening plots moist after a good days rain (and the Cubs still got their game in — two wins!).

As I described yesterday, I’m trying square foot gardening this year.  Many of the plots do not have the squares marked with rope, but this one does.  The bottom right square is currently planted with 16 radishes about a week ago.  We should see them sprouting soon with the radishes ready to eat in early May.

Friday will be another day of planting – swiss chard among other early spring plants.

The tomato plants started inside are looking great.

Tomato Plants Inside, April 2009

The tomato plants were started a while back and can go in the ground after the last frost — which is around April 25 for Cook County.  I will probably start letting them outside to acclimate starting this Friday (I’m a nice guy — it’s going to be almost 70).

The plants are about 6 inches tall.  I hope they’ll reach 8 inches before they go in the ground.

I still have many more posts on tomatoes – varieties, growing tips, etc.  I probably spend more time with the tomatoes than any other plant in the garden.

Finally, and not to be forgotten, also growing with the tomatoes are peppers.  The peppers are looking good.  They need much more light under the grow lamp from day one to get strong.  They are about 3 inches tall right now and I will probably baby them a bit longer than the tomato plants.  Below are six sweet pepper plants in the APS seed starters.

Pepper Plants Inside, April 2009

Related articles:

1. Spring Preparations
2. It’s a tough day for a Tomato
3. Seedstarting Mistakes

April showers are suppose to bring May flowers.  It is also a bit too early to get the hose out for watering.  Come May, I have an irrigation systems (a soaker hose lining the planting beds to get water directly to the roots) running to compensate for dry days.  In April, I rely upon mother nature and the 4 inches of rain that would adequately start off my lettuces, spinach, and radishes.

This week looks better (except if you’re going to the Cubs home opener today).  According to Weather.com’s Agricultural forecast, Chicago should get a half inch of rain over the next 36 hours and then maybe some more on Saturday.  I’ll have to keep a close eye and maybe this will be an April I need to water.

Related articles:

1. Monitoring the Weather
2. Spring Status
3. It’s a tough day for a Tomato