Perpetual Spinach or Chard

For years I had been looking in the seed catalogue at something that looked quite delicious: Perpetual Spinach, leaf beet, or perpetual chard. This vegetable appealed a lot to me because of the opportunity to grow something that tastes like spinach, but grows like chard. Chard, or beet leaves, have always been easier for me to grow than spinach. Chard has a lot more holding capacity in the summer than spinach and can be a lot less fussy over the winter.

With all these wonderful things being said about chard, it would be a pointless to talk to someone who has not grown this variety to go into detail about this vegetable without describing the taste. What most vegetable gardeners want to know before growing something is: is it likely that I'll enjoy consuming this? 

So here's how I'll put it: If you like both chard and spinach, you’ll love perpetual spinach. If you really like chard, you’ll like this leaf vegetable in salads. However, if you don’t like chard at all, you’ll probably want to limit your picking of this variety to tender leaves around 3 inches long or less. If the temperature rises too high or the leaves get too long, then the chalky chard texture and copper/iron metallic taste can overpower the pleasant spinach taste or tender crisp quality of the leaves.

Take away: If you want the longest season of this vegetable for salads, your best bet is in the fall. This will mean that the leaves grow slowly for maximum use of smaller leaves for salads. Once the heat sets in and the leaves grow quite a lot, this variety is better cooked.

Another alternative: In the spring, transplant perennial spinach into areas that will receive plenty of shade, while still having airflow. With ample shade, this variety remains tender longer and, if spaced properly with adequate airflow, will develop healthy stands of leaves for salads and, as the temperatures rise, for cooking or juicing. Yum!

Spring Garden Visits

Before the end of the school year, I appreciated some small gardens at local schools and neighbors. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did.

The first garden is located in the middle of the school grounds. The halls of the school go around it on 3 sides. As staff and students walk around the halls, they can see the garden in the middle. For me, walking by the garden is quite a rejuvenating experience.

Flowering Fava Beans

Onion Flower

Borage

Borage and Nasturtium

Orange Nasturtiums

Sprouting Cauliflower with Aphids

More sprouting Cauliflower

Interesting shape of the Cauliflower as it blossoms

One last look

A bed of onions.

Peas

Black eyed Susan?

Favas with seed pods.

A close look at the fava beans

This bean is sideways - or is it a sideways picture?

Fava beans are prolific!

Another look at the prolific fava beans

One last last fava picture

These strawberry plants are doing quite well.

A closer look at some mouth-watering strawberries

I'm resisting the urge to pick these

One last look at the strawberry plants

The second garden is located on the west side of a school, near the younger grades. There are plenty of interesting things to see here as well.

An assortment of winter vegetables

Flowering Kale

Swiss Chard anyone?

The sign says it all.

Potato Plants

Flowering Carrots

Another bed of assorted veggies.

Some sweet pea flowers

Some radishes

Some kind of celery plant sprouting up from the roots.

Another celery plant sprouting up from the walkway

Celery again.

Celery and assorted veggies.

Swiss Chard and other veggies.

Cale and flowering parsley or fennel

Chard

Now the strawberry patch is being infested by the celery.

Some strawberries are growing.

Ripening strawberries

One last look at this garden

Not all gardens are kept up. Here is one that could really use a little more attention.

A neighbor of mine always has a very well planned-out garden. Here are some pictures from his front yard.

Zucchini of some sort.

The color is just exceptional.

The zucchini continues to grow.

My neighbor's tomato plants.

Some wildflowers in a lawn in the front of a school.

Things are not always as they seem. In the next garden I was really impressed with the beautiful color of the lettuce pictured here. However, once I tasted one of the leaves, I regretted my decision. This variety is apparently very sensitive to the heat and becomes very bitter.

A mix of spinach, lettuce and carrots

As you walk around your neighborhood, I hope that you will be able to encounter some beautiful gardens like these. Even if we are not enthusiastic about getting our hands dirty in the soil, vegetable gardening is good for all of us in so many ways.

 

One last look at the purple kale from the second school garden