Kale and Swiss Chard from the Garden

Here is a picture of some beautiful Red Russian Kale and Rainbow Swiss Chard that I picked from the garden today. There are three kale plants that are thriving and numerous chard plants are growing. Only a couple of the chard plants have leaves that are big enough to pick, so I picked them and they look great!

As a wrap-up of my experiment to see what would grow in the shady patch in my backyard garden...

Here is the original diagram that I posted back in May when I put a whole bunch of seeds in a shady area to see what would grow:

The green onions were bulbs and some of them grew, some of them did not. Out of the beans, the Golden Wax Bean plant isn't growing too well, but the Royal Burgundy Bean and Tender Green Bean are starting to sprout little beans! I also planted all three bean varieties into pots and placed them in a sunny spot on the deck; they seem to be growing great in the sun, too. The Cherry-Belle Radishes are growing quite nicely, although they are taking a lot longer to grow than I thought. The Bloody Dock and Sushni were purchased as seedlings and they are still growing. Every once in a while we get to enjoy them in a fresh green salad.

The most successful plants in the shade have been: Rainbow Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, the beans and the radishes.

The Pak Choi and Wasabi Arugula didn't grow at all. I'm not sure what happened when I planted the seeds but they didn't sprout. The Tres Fine Endive grew great but they were all attacked by bugs. There were tons of holes in all of the leaves that didn't seem to stop, so I ripped out all of the plants and have planted some new Swiss Chard seeds in the hopes that I can grow more of those instead since the bugs don't seem to eat those plants.

Stay tuned for more updates!