Swiss Chard

Overview

Swiss chard Beta vulgaris cicla        Rotation group - Others

Often called leaf beet, spinach beet or seakale beet it isn’t either a spinach or a kale but a true member of the beetroot family.  Confusingly, although it is a beetroot it is not grown to produce a swollen edible root like its cousins. There is a lot of misleading information surrounding the naming of this plant but correctly it is leaf beet. Chard is the term used to describe the young, tender edible leaf shoots that it produces and even better it comes in a choice of colours; white, red, yellow and orange. They all taste much the same and maintain their colour after cooking.

Varieties to choose (sold by Kings Seeds): -

• Perpetual Spinach (AGM) - plants produce a mass of mid-green leaves on the green stems which will continue to be produced right through the winter
• Rainbow Chard - bring colour to your vegetable garden. A lovely mixture of various coloured stem and leaves  that can be used as baby leaf for salads or delicious cooked when fully grown
• Swiss Chard - sometimes called Seakale Beet. Produces a bushy plant with glossy dark leaves with a thick white rib. Pick young leaves for constant cropping.

How to grow

Sow

Leaf beet is raised from seed. The seed is sown in the open ground from March to April. The seed has corky skin just the same as round beet and it will help to speed up germination is the seed is soaked in warm water for a couple of hours before sowing. This is extremely beneficial during hot, dry conditions. The seed is sown in rows that are 18ins/45cms apart in drills that are ¾ in/2cms deep. The seed can either be sprinkled along the row to be thinned out later or 2 or 3 seeds space sown and thinned down to one seedling after germination. The final spacing between plants is 6in/15cms for smaller leaves and 12ins/30cms if larger leaves are required.

Growing on

After the seedlings have been thinned it is important never to let the plants dry out. They must be watered regularly and because beets are a coastal plant they will always benefit from the addition of liquid seaweed to the watering can.  At the end of summer the plants can be left in the ground to over winter but they will need some protection against extremely cold winter weather. They will look in a terrible state by Springtime but give them a tidy up, a feed of general fertiliser and they will quickly perk up. They will provide a steady supply of fresh leaves until the warmer weather arrives, which, because beets are biennials it will always trigger flowering.

Tip. If you can afford the space allow one or two plants to flowers they are a magnet for hoverflies who are ace greenfly munchers.

Aftercare

Hoe regularly around the plants to control weeds and to create dust mulch. Remove any damaged leaves and cut out any flowering spikes if they appear. Water the growing plants regularly to keep the leaves succulent.

How to Harvest

For the smaller leaves they must be picked when they are the size of a table spoon and for the larger leaves when they are the size of the blade of garden trowel. All usable leaves must be harvested to keep the plants in production. The leaves can be cut away or carefully snapped but care must be taken not to damage the young buds at the base of the plants.

Issues

Leaf beet plants are generally trouble free to grow. They can suffer from powdery mildew if the soil is allowed to dry out and downy mildew if the summer is a particularly wet.