Leaves & salads
Swiss chard
Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. cicla
Timings for your region
Suggested: Moderate · Explained in the glossary
Sow outdoorsearly April – late June
Harvestmid June – early November
Practical tip
Easier than spinach and crops all summer. Keep taking the outer leaves and leave the heart standing.
Origin & history
Chard, like beetroot, sugar beet and fodder beet, descends from the wild sea beet (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) growing along Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts — one and the same species, selected once for leaf and once for root. In Central Europe chard was for centuries the leaf vegetable, and only lost that place to spinach in the 19th century. The old German name “Beißkohl” survives regionally to this day; in Switzerland it is called “Krautstiel”.
Varieties
Stalk chard, also called ribbed chard, forms broad fleshy stems and effectively gives you two vegetables in one; cutting chard has thin stems and finer foliage, is cut like spinach and re-grows faster in return. White-stemmed varieties such as “Lucullus” are the most productive and stand longest; the coloured mixtures with yellow, orange and red stems are chiefly decorative and grow a little more slowly. Chard is sold almost entirely as open-pollinated seed, though saving your own is laborious because it flowers only in its second year.
Care
The “seed” is a cluster of several seeds, so it always comes up in tufts — thin rigorously to 25 cm or you get nothing but stems and hardly any leaf. As a moderate feeder it is carried through the whole summer by one dressing of mature compost in spring. Water evenly, otherwise the stems turn woody and stringy. Break yellowing outer leaves right out at regular intervals so the plant keeps driving into the heart; under a cover of leaves or brushwood chard overwinters in mild areas and gives an early cut in March before it bolts in its second year.
What can go wrong
The typical attacker is the beet leaf miner, whose larvae mine blistered, pale brown tunnels between the leaf surfaces. Take affected leaves off as you walk the bed and lay fine-mesh netting over the young plants, and it stays a cosmetic matter. In warm, humid summers Cercospora leaf spots appear as well — round grey-brown spots with a red-brown rim. Against those, space more widely, water at the base, remove affected foliage and keep chard, beetroot and spinach three years apart.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Cut the leaves off at the base with a knife rather than tearing them — tearing easily pulls the heart out with them. Separate stems and leaf and cook them separately; the stems need about five minutes longer. Fresh chard keeps only two or three days; the leaf part can be blanched and frozen like spinach, but the stems go mushy. Red and yellow stems lose their colour in cooking — if you want to see it, shave them raw or steam them only briefly.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.