In my yard, I can grow both Swiss Chard and garlic like nobody's business! I tend to think of Chard as a "beetless beet" -- and it grows that way in my garden. They are very, VERy similar, and I use the greens of each in exactly the same way. I would have to say, it can be darned near impossible to tell them apart until you pull one out of the ground. My chard stays put and comes back year after year -- I planted eight a few years ago, and even transplanted them, and they're still thriving. Seems to me that quite often, the nursery sells me s omething other than what is labelled -- Did you try to transplant beets? Root crops don't normally transplant veryw ell for me.

Well, I prefer to plant mine directly, but this Spring it did take a full 3 weeks to see any germination, so I can understand wanting to get it going indoors. I just like to eliminate that whole hardening off issue whenever I can. I figure it knows when to come up, and if it comes up it must be hardy to the present conditions. This season I had a few chard plants that over-wintered, so I cleared away the mulch and planted new chard in the blank spaces around the older plants. So far both are living nicely under a cloche, which is really pretty wide open and ready to come off. The chard will respond to the lengthening days and noonday sun.

Seeker, If you don't have sheer curtains, you might find some at a thrift store or garage sale. Otherwise, tulle netting can be a good option for keeping pests off crops, depending on the size of the pest. Other than lightweight sheer curtains or tulle netting (available at fabric stores), I can't think of any other sort of covering that would be lightweight enough to substitute for floating row covers. Other than covering the plants, you could try to repel the pests. A garlic spray or a hot pepper spray might work. Sometimes repellent sprays work and sometimes they don't. If you need a simple recipe for a garlic-based or hot pepper-based insect repellent, let us know and somebody or several somebodies will post recipes here for you. For any crops bothered by cabbage loopers and imported cabbage worms, there's an organic spray called Bt for short. It is a form of bacteria that only affects that specific group of insects....in this case, you'd need Bt 'Kurstaki' which targets butterfly and moth larvae. There are other forms of Bt that target other pests, including one that targets Colorado Potato Beetles. I'll link an example of one of the Bt caterpillar killers for you. This product is made by many different manufacturers and sold under many different names so just look for a caterpillar killer that has Bt as the active ingredient. Susan, They are one of our earlier signs of spring, though not the first, but not one I'm happy to see. We have had swallowtails around all week (it seems early, but then everything is early this year) and I always am happy to see them. I think slugs and/or snails could/would attack Swiss Chard but here in the land of red river clay, we don't have no stinkin' slugs.....so obviously I've never seen them on my Swiss Chard. I've never seen a slug anywhere on our property since moving here 13 years ago, so I hope I didn't just jinx my garden by saying that. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Example of One Bt 'Kurstaki' Product

Ilene, It sounds like your retirement is off to a wonderful start and I am so glad you'e enjoying it. I have a little mud, thanks to that 2.6" of rain we got the other day, but our soil should dry pretty quickly since it was bone dry before the rainfall. Your mud seems to be an ongoing thing this year.....unfortunately. The photo of the poppy is gorgeous. I planted poppies after we bought the land in 1997 and they've reseeded here, there and everywhere (including in the middle of the dirt/gravel road one year). They always surprise me by popping up where least expected. I was only outside for a couple of hours this morning. We started out with 100% humidity for the third day in a row and once the temperatures heat up a little, it is unbearable outside. I'll go back out at about 3 or 4 o'clock, once the temps. start to drop a little. The garden looks really good to everyone who sees it, except me. And it isn't that is doesn't look good to me, just that it looks "behind" where it normally is by the end of May. What do I expect? We still had low temps. in the upper 30s and 40s in early May, so it would be odd if the garden wasn't "behind". I suspect by mid-June the garden will look about the way it usually does in mid-June, except the corn is still going to be behind. Some years I pick early corn by Memorial Day weekend....this year there is no early corn, and the regular corn won't be ready until July. That's the breaks. At least I have corn. Last year's rain wiped most of it out, so I hope we harvest a good crop this year. There is no rain in our forecast here for a few days and I only have a couple of things left to do in the veggie garden. I have one area of the flower border that needs to be weeded when it dries out a tiny bit more. I'm seeing snakes more and more, but only one rattler, and so far none in the garden that I've seen. The venomous snakes are my least favorite part of living here. I just hate them. I have one guinea who lost his or her mind and started roosting up high in the chicken coop (which has a high, peaked roof) about 4 o'clock yesteday and still hadn't come down as of a few minutes ago. Finally, I went out with a rake and chased it down off its' perch and out of the coop. It headed straight for the drinking water, and I came back inside. Hopefully, now that it is down, it will go out and eat and do other guinea things like prowling through the tall grass, flying madly from tree to tree and squawking and yakking like an idiot. I don't suppose we'll ever know why it sat on a perch for 22 hours. It is never dull around here, rain or shine. Dawn