Swiss Chard Bright Lights

AAS 1998. Very decorative vegetable with attractive stems right throughout the year in gold, pink, orange, purple, red and white plus green or bronze leaves. Suitable for both vegetable garden and flower border, this newcomer is going to make itself known even if only in salads.

How to Grow Chard from Seed

Colourful and nutritious, Swiss Chard is also known as Seakale, Leaf Beet, Stawberry Spinach, Silverbeet, Mangold, Beet Spinach, White Beet, Chilean Beet and Roman Kale, to name but a few !

However you refer to this ornamental edible when its too hot for your spinach or too cold for your lettuce reliable Swiss Chard will still be going strong. Cover your Chard with straw or leaves as an insulating layer over winter and it will continue to produce new leaves the following spring.

Chard will keep producing leaves for a very long cropping period. Regularly harvest the young tasty leaves, don't wait for them to reach full size as they tend to have a bitter flavour once mature.

Stem colours improve with the temperature and when the central ribs are 'rhubarb' like, the stems can be cut and used as a celery substitute.

Swiss chard does exceptionally well in containers too, pots should be at least 12 inches deep and 12 inches across; a 14 inch pot will comfortably accommodate three or four plants.

Before planting, soak Swiss Chard seeds in lukewarm water for 15 minutes to speed up germination. Sow the seeds 1 cm deep and a few inches apart directly in the garden, or sow them indoors into individual plugs trays filled with a good seed compost. Transplant the seedlings into the garden when they are 2 to 3 inches tall spacing them 4 or 5 inches apart, or up to 10 inches apart if you only plan to harvest the outer leaves.

Thin seedlings so they are 4 to 5 inches apart, or 8 to 10 inches apart if you plan to only harvest the outer leaves. Swiss chard is a 'cut and come again' plant. You can either continually harvest just the outer stalks and baby leaves, or cut whole young plants off an inch or two above the soil and wait for them to regrow.

Plants do best in full sun but can tolerate some shade. They cancope with light frosts in spring and moderate freezes in autumn.