Glowing Golden Goodness

Day 143
The Daily DuBrule

One of the benefits of owning a retail garden center and being a garden writer is that you occasionally get offered free stuff. I happened to see a form this winter from Renee's Seeds offering free seed packets to trial. I decided to get one packet each of assorted edibles that I normally wouldn't plant and write about them. 'Pot of Gold' Swiss chard has turned to be one of my new favorites!

I first decided to try this because I love to blend pretty edibles into my flower gardens. I figured this would be an easy one. I don't eat a lot of chard because my husband prefers bitter greens and I only cook for the two of us. Now that I have a huge patch of gorgeous 'Pot of Gold', I am cooking with it all the time. I sneak it into rice, pasta, and chicken dishes. I cook it with garlic scapes. YUM! It is tender and delicious. I dragged out a book I bought back in the 70's when I had my very first huge vegetable garden: Too Many Tomatoes by Lois Burrows and Laura Myers. It's a miracle that I have managed to keep this book through over 40 years of moving, even during my time at the cottage when I had no sun and very little soil and couldn't grow much food. But there it sits on my bookshelf and it is divided up into chapters based on what vegetable is overflowing your harvest basket at the moment. I remember now that I used to cook brown rice with all sorts of spices, wilt the chard, roll the rice mixture in it, then place it in a pan with tomato sauce and cheese and bake it. 

Back to my original premise of growing 'Pot of Gold' chard as edible landscaping plant. I imagine it in my flower gardens, with purple poppies coming up through it. I can see it behind my new yellow Leucanthemum 'Banana Cream' (Shasta daisy). It has a bold leaf, so I need to pair it with plants that have a finer texture. It would even work in containers with my 'Mrs. Cox' geraniums. Fun, fun, fun times in the garden this year!