Chard and perpetual spinach are very similar, for convenience this guide will talk mainly about chard, mentioning specific quirks of perpetual spinach where appropriate.
This guide provides information on how to grow chard and perpetual spinach, including sowing and harvesting periods, recommended varieties, and how to plant, feed, water, and protect the plants. Chard is a useful and nutritious crop that can be grown for large leaves and stems that are great cooked or for smaller leaves and tender stems in salads. It grows well in full sun or light shade and can grow in containers too, if well watered.
I use a rating system to help me decide what to grow and it considers lots of factors, but the main ones are how tasty it is, healthy it is to eat, how expensive it is to buy, how big it's harvest is, when it's harvest period is and whether I can buy it organically and if not how much it's sprayed.
Chard scores well in this system, it’s beautiful, prolific and extremely healthy, although it can be slightly unpredictable, often going to seed if sown too early or if stressed in the summer heat. It’s particularly useful in summer, when true spinach goes to seed and it’s a nice complement to spinach for the rest of the year, especially the stems, which are great in stir-fry.
Chard provides a nice continuous harvest, one leaf at a time, over a very long period. If you are using those leaves in salads, or in small numbers for cooking, even 2 plants per person might be enough, but if you use more, especially if you use the leaves wilted down or in smoothies you might need as many as 5 plants per person. Typically 0.5m2 of chard per person is plenty.
You can grow chard for two purposes, for large leaves and stems that are great cooked or for smaller leaves and tender stems in salads. If you juice or makes smoothies then you can use large or small leaves.
When growing for salads though you can grow 2-3 seedlings per module and plant closer together (8 inches each way) whereas for larger leaves you only want 1-2 seedlings and larger spacing (12” each way).
Chard grows well in full sun or light shade and it can grow in containers too, if well watered. Watering is also important in full sun, otherwise stressed plants are likely to run to seed if we have a hot dry spell in summer.
Chard is normally sown in spring to early autumn, survives over winter with only small harvests, grows strongly in early spring again and then goes to seed in mid-spring. As a result it’s possible for have chard for most of the year, or the whole of the year if you’re prepared to sow an early crop, accepting that it will go to seed and you plan to replace it when it does.
<aside> 💡 For more details on the model that I use for describing harvest periods (first earlies, second earlies etc) please see the chapter on my growing framework
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Chard is such a useful and nutritious crop that it’s often worth the effort to have it available all year round. The alternative - which I do - is to have chard available from summer until mid spring and grow early beetroot and their chard like leaves in late spring.