They are one of the most spectacular vegetables you can grow. These colorful chards look handsome when planted with other greens or edible flowers that complement their colors.
Plant chard seeds ¼ to ½ inch deep in full sun, in neutral soil with lots of added organic matter. Chard seeds are actually fruits containing four to eight seeds, so plant them 4 to 6 inches apart, then thin them to a foot apart. When you plant the colored mixes, because they are predominately red and white, seed a full flat and wait until the plants are 4 inches tall to select out yellows and oranges. For tender succulent leaves, keep plants well watered but not soggy. Mulch with a few inches of organic matter to inhibit weeds and preserve moisture, and add organic matter to the soil. When plants are about six weeks old, fertilize them with ½ cup of balanced organic fertilizer for every 5 feet of row. A few pests and diseases bother chard, namely slugs, snails (especially when chard is young), and leaf miners, a fly larvae. Leaf miners tunnel through chard leaves in early summer in northern climates and all spring and most of the summer in the West, disfiguring leaves by causing patches of dead tissue where they feed. To harvest chard, remove the outside leaves at the base so tender new leaves can keep coming throughout the season.
Varieties
There are numerous varieties of chard: many are from France and Italy; others are old American favorites. The leaf chard is often listed in the spinach section of a seed catalog, not with the chard.
‘Argentata’: 55 days, a large Italian green-and-white heirloom chard, plants are widely adapted and among the most cold-tolerant
‘Bright Lights’: 60 days, a large chard with colorful midribs of yellow, orange, red, pink, coral, cream, and white, with some streaked plants in the mix. This variety was selected to have a higher proportion of yellow and orange plants than usual in mixes
‘Five-Color Silver Beet’: a large chard with colorful midribs of yellow, orange, red, pink, cream, and white, with some streaked plants in the mix
‘Fordhook Giant’: 60 days, the standard American green chard with white ribs, fairly cold-hardy
‘Paros’: days, a French green-and-white traditional-type chard with milder and more tender stalks than some domestic varieties
‘Bright Lights’ chard
‘Perpetual Spinach’ chard
‘Perpetual Spinach’ (‘Spinach beet’): 60 days, small ribs, provides a very long harvest of especially tender leaves from spring through winter in most climates, good for baby greens, especially well suited for greenhouses and cold frames
‘Ruby’ (‘Rhubarb’): solid red, sometimes dark pink stems with dark green leaves; an heirloom variety that is widely available
How to prepare: Young chard leaves are tender and mild; they’re used as a staple in mixed green salads or as a bed for fruits and other vegetables. The leaf chard is especially suited for this treatment. As chard leaves are large, remove the long, crisp ribs and chop them separately from the greens; or if they’re too tough and stringy, use the ribs in soups instead. Before adding them to salads, rip or cut the greens into bite-size pieces or cut in a chiffonade. Do this close to serving time because the leaves and ribs, especially of the colorful varieties, discolor once they’re cut. To keep the color, I’ve found that julienning the stems just before serving makes a colorful confetti to sprinkle on a salad; if you sprinkle the julienned stems with lemon juice or vinegar they will hold their color longer in a slaw or mixed salad. To accentuate the bright-colored chards in a salad, I sometimes combine red chard with red beets, and the yellow chard with yellow beets.
CHICORIES
Cichorium intybus
Chicories are a cool-weather salad staple in parts of Europe. The quintessential Italian cutting chicories, the burgundy-colored heading radicchios, and the elegant Belgian endive are all covered here. Curly endive and escarole, well-known chicories associated with France, are covered in their own entry (see page 35). All chicories have in common a mildly bitter taste that can be mitigated by blanching, and by weather conditions. Blanching is a process whereby you exclude light from the new shoots so they emerge creamy white and lose a lot of their bitterness.
How to grow: Generally chicories are easy to grow, though they prefer cool growing conditions and often perform poorly in very hot-summer areas. Plant all chicory seeds ¼ inch deep in good soil filled with organic matter and in full sun. (Or start seeds inside and transplant them out when they are a few inches tall.) Thin seedlings to 8 inches apart and keep them fairly moist to produce healthy plants that have few pests and disease problems. The challenges to producing some of the chicories are in the timing and the pre- and post-harvest treatment. And it’s here that there are major differences by type.
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