Oh yes, forgot about my lima beans. I'm growing those as well and have some yellow beans germinating. Upon searching the forums some more, I'm considering Amaranth, but need to order the seeds and wait for them to arrive. Maybe I will just wait it out a couple of months and plant the beets and chard at a more ideal time. Looks like I'm gonna have some really hot radishes....LOL. That's interesting that the heat has to do with the heat of the radish. I know they can be grown year round here but it's not the ideal time right now. But, they are fun to grow cause they are quick to mature and really don't take up much space between other things and can be pulled before the larger plants get big. Ania

Okay I'm convinced! That looks so yummy. I love sauteed spinach with just a little salt pepper and barely a splash of really good vinegar but it sounds like chard blows spinach out of the water (or tugboat- sorry Popeye)but stuffed swiss chard leaves?! I am there. I love stuffed grape leaves and cabbage - dolmades or halupkees anyone? What a good idea Silvia. All of the other ideas are great as well. I really like threads featuring a certain veggie with recipes and hints and experiences growing them. I'm going to plant a couple of window boxes (like 8 x 18) this weekend with chard. Any recommendation on variety? I know HD sells Burpee's Bright Lights and another less colorful but more greens looking variety. I'm excited to see how it goes. As long as I can keep the squirels from digging them all out... :o)

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

I'd plant them. There's probably at least a month before the first frost, plenty of time for them to germinate. & once they stick their heads above ground, they'll do fine as long as we don't have a killing frost, in which case you cover them with a sheet until the sun rises the next morning. Have fun!