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Chard

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Spring is the busiest time in the vegetable garden, sowing lots of crops to enjoy later in the year.

Season: Spring
Name: Chard
Common Name: Swiss chard
Description: Some varieties of chard have brightly coloured stems of red, pink, yellow and orange and will really brighten up your vegetable patch.
Interesting facts: Chard is known by a confusing number of other names including Swiss chard, seakale beet, ruby chard, rhubarb chard, silver beet, spinach beet, crab beet and Chilean beet! You will see many of these names in seed catalogues, as well as the closely related leaf beet or perpetual spinach.

Growing tips

What you’ll need:

A packet of chard seeds – try varieties such as ‘Bright Lights’, ‘Bright Yellow’ and ‘Rainbow Chard’
Gardening gloves
Trowel
Rake
Measuring stick or cane
Watering can

What you do:

Make sure the area is weed free by weeding with a trowel and raking the soil to a fine tilth.
Make a shallow drill with a trowel about 1.5cm deep and thinly sow the seed in to the drill. Cover the seed lightly with soil and water.
If you are sowing more than one row, leave a space of 40cm between the rows.
As the seedlings begin to grow, thin out the plants so that they are 20cm apart – you can use the thinnings in salads.
Harvest the leaves from ten weeks after sowing; the small leaves can be used in salads and cooking.