Swiss chard at Harlow Carr, drawn with my non-dominant left hand.
Tag: Chard
Opium Poppy
This opium (not Himalayan) poppy had seeded itself on one of the veg beds, so I’ve transferred it to my plants for pollinators bed and it seems to be settling in.
This foxglove rosette will be relocated too, when we put in the runner beans and dwarf French.
Chard
What’s left of the chard will be coming out soon when we start with the runner beans and dwarf French beans in this bed. This morning I put in 50 Setton onion sets, which we covered with netting, not just to prevent blackbirds and pigeons pulling them out but also to prevent foxes rolling about and digging on the veg bed as they did last year.
I forked a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone before planting the onion sets and it’s probably the smell of it that attracts the foxes. I’ve set up the trail cam to check on whether they turn up as expected.
Chard
The rainbow chard looks bedraggled but I thought that it would be worth leaving it in because, if the weather improves, it should start sprouting fresh leaves. I remove dead and nibbled leaves plus any that I don’t like the look of; the test is ‘if I saw this in a the supermarket, would I buy it?’ If the answer is no, it goes on the compost heap.
Definitely not going on the compost heap are the white rhizomes of couch grass. There are just a few blades showing so I need to dig down now before this invasive spreads any further. There are also a few rosettes of forget-me-not and opium poppy but they’re not a problem.