Pig Sty Avenue

For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...

I had a couple of hours in the garden in the early evening, (it's already getting too hot to do very much during the day, my patch of ground facing south west as it does). I raked over the garlic bed I'd cleared a few days ago. There's an ants' nest at one end of it: big buggers unlike anything we get in the UK. Anyway, I hope they'll leave the garlic alone. I planted just one row down the middle of the bed, the cloves about 10" apart, and planted so that only the sprouting green shoot was above ground. Then I planted "Russian Giant" sunflower seeds, that I'd bought back home, in two small beds, each about 2x4 ft. One of them I planted as per the instructions: each sowing a pair of seeds, and they were about 18" apart. This bed is under the kitchen window, and I'm looking ahead to a time when birds might be attracted to the seeds, and the flowers should be at a level with the window. The other bed I was deliberately more slapdash...