How to Grow Swiss Chard from Seed (Beta vulgaris var. cicla)

If you only grow one leafy vegetable, make it chard. A single spring sowing crops from June until the following May; it shrugs off the July heat that sends spinach to seed, stands through most winters, and asks for nothing more than a bucket of compost and the occasional drink. It is also one of the handsomest plants in the garden — the glossy leaves and glowing white, gold or ruby ribs of Beta vulgaris earn it a place in flower borders as often as in beds. And the timing is right: the first half of September is the last window for a sowing that overwinters and gives you the earliest greens of next year. Here is how to grow Swiss chard from seed, which varieties to choose, and how to keep one plant producing for a full twelve months.

• Sow Mid-Apr–July outdoors · late Aug–mid-Sept to overwinter · Feb–Mar under cover
• Soil Rich, moisture-retentive, sun or part shade · pH 6.5–7.5, tolerates lime
• Spacing Thin to 30 cm for full plants · 10 cm for baby leaf · rows 40 cm apart
• Harvest Baby leaf from 5 weeks · full leaves from 10–12 weeks · picks for up to a year

Chard, leaf beet, perpetual spinach: one species, three names

Botanically, chard is a beetroot grown for its top instead of its root. Beetroot, sugar beet, fodder beet and every kind of chard are all Beta vulgaris, bred over two thousand years from the sea beet that still grows wild on Atlantic and Mediterranean shingle. That coastal ancestry is why chard tolerates salt, wind and drought, and why it does not bolt in a hot summer the way true spinach does. The leaf beets come in two groups. Swiss chard — the "Swiss" is a nineteenth-century seed-catalogue label; the plant is Mediterranean — has broad, fleshy midribs that are a vegetable in their own right, in white, gold, orange, pink or crimson. Perpetual spinach, also sold as spinach beet or leaf beet, has narrow green stems and thinner, more spinach-like leaves; it is the hardiest of the family and the one to grow if what you want is a spinach substitute that never runs to seed. Neither is a spinach — our guide to growing true spinach from seed explains why that plant behaves so differently. Everything below applies to both.

Choosing a variety: white ribs for winter, colour for summer

The plainer the chard, the tougher it is. White- and green-ribbed types — the Italian Verde a Costa Bianca, the old American Lucullus with its pale, savoyed leaves, the broad-stemmed French Blonde à Carde Blanche and the Dutch White Silver, which we also stock as organic seed — are the most productive and the most frost-hardy, and they are the ones to sow now. The coloured chards are for spring and summer sowings: Bright Lights is the classic rainbow mixture of gold, orange, pink, red and white stems, Rhubarb Chard gives crimson ribs and red-veined leaves but bolts sooner and is less hardy, and Peppermint has candy-striped pink and white stalks. There is also a rainbow chard microgreen mix for a windowsill tray in the dark months. Browse the range in the chard seed collection, by species under Beta vulgaris — which also holds the beetroots — or in organic chard.

How to sow chard, step by step

1. Prepare a rich, firm bed Chard is a greedy leaf crop with a deep taproot. Dig in a bucket of compost per square metre a fortnight ahead, tread firm and rake level — see preparing your soil. Full sun is ideal; three or four hours will do.
2. Soak the seed overnight Each knobbly chard "seed" is really a dry fruit cluster holding two to four seeds, and its corky coat carries germination inhibitors. Twelve hours in water washes them out and turns a fortnight's wait into about a week.
3. Sow 2 cm deep, one cluster every 10 cm Drills 40 cm apart, one cluster per station, cover and water. Chard germinates from about 10 °C — mid-April onwards outdoors; in September the soil is still warm and seedlings show within the week. Our guide to direct sowing covers the drill itself.
4. Thin twice — and transplant the spares Every cluster throws up a tuft of seedlings. Thin to one per station at 5 cm tall, then to 30 cm once the leaves touch. Unlike spinach, chard transplants happily, so the thinnings can fill gaps or go into a pot; the rest are salad. For baby leaf, stop at 10 cm and cut little and often.
5. Water steadily and mulch The taproot makes chard fairly drought-tolerant, but a plant that dries out gives tough, bitter leaves and is far more likely to bolt. A deep soak once or twice a week in dry spells plus a mulch is all it needs — see watering your garden and mulching.
6. Cover a September sowing from late October Small plants come through winter better than big ones. A fleece tunnel or cloche keeps the leaves clean and brings the spring restart forward by weeks; in an unheated greenhouse you will cut baby leaves all winter. Cloches, fleece and cold frames explains the options.

Caring for chard through a twelve-month season

Chard is a biennial: leaves in its first year, a winter on a fat crown, and a two-metre flower spike in May or June of the second. That is the natural end of the plant, and the reason to sow a little each spring and again in late summer so there is always a young row coming on — succession sowing at its simplest. A spring sowing picks heaviest from July to November; frost collapses the outer leaves, but the crown is hardier than it looks and in March it throws a second flush of tender leaves before it flowers. A nitrogen-rich feed in midsummer keeps a cut-and-come-again row going — see feeding and fertilising — but stop by September, because soft late growth is exactly what frost destroys.

Pests are few. The beet leaf miner leaves brown, blistered tunnels in the leaves in May–June and again in August–September; pick and bin affected leaves at the first sign, because the maggots pupate in the soil and come round again. Slugs graze seedlings, pigeons strip overwintering plants unless netted, and a wet autumn brings leaf spot and downy mildew to a crowded row — space is the cure, as for most plant diseases. You will rarely need our guide to common garden pests. In a crop rotation, chard goes with the beetroot and the "others", not with the brassicas or legumes.

Harvesting: two vegetables from one plant

Start picking when the outer leaves are 15–25 cm long, ten to twelve weeks from sowing. Cut or snap them off a finger's width above the crown, always leave the four or five central leaves, and never take more than a third of a plant at one visit; handled this way, one plant gives a picking every ten days for months. The leaves cook like spinach and wilt far less; the ribs, stripped from the leaf and sliced, are a second vegetable — steamed, sautéed with garlic or baked in a gratin, they are why the French and Italians grow the broad-stemmed types. Baby leaves are cut at 5–8 cm, about 3 cm above the crown, and regrow three or four times. Chard keeps only a few days in the fridge, so pick what you need; a glut blanches and freezes well — see harvesting and storing produce.

Swiss chard vs perpetual spinach

Grow both and there is always something green to pick. In the same bed, true spinach covers the two cool ends of the year, kale and the hardy winter salad leaves — corn salad, mizuna, claytonia — carry December to February, and a row of winter lettuce sown this week fills the rest. If the garden is full, chard is one of the best crops for a large pot or a shady corner: see growing from seed in containers and what to grow in shade.

Common chard mistakes

• Sowing outdoors in March — a young plant that sits through a fortnight of cold thinks it has had its winter, and bolts in June. Wait until mid-April, or start under cover.
• Leaving the clusters unthinned — three seedlings per station become three weak plants. Thin to one; eat or transplant the rest.
• Sowing rainbow chard for winter — Bright Lights and Rhubarb Chard are the least hardy of the family. Sow white-ribbed types now and save the colour for April.
• Stripping a plant bare — take the outer leaves and leave the heart. Cut through the crown and that is the end of it.
• Letting it dry out in July — tough, bitter leaves and a flower spike. Water deeply and mulch.
• Ignoring leaf-miner blisters — every tunnel left on the plant is next month's generation in your soil. Pick and bin, never compost.
• Feeding in October — late nitrogen gives lush growth that frost turns to slime. Feed in summer and again in March.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still sow chard in September?
Yes, and it is worth doing. Sow outdoors by about the middle of the month in a mild area, later under a cloche or in a cold greenhouse, and choose a white- or green-ribbed variety. The plants stay small over winter — that is what you want — then grow away in March to give leaves until they bolt in early summer, weeks before a spring sowing is ready. Verde a Costa Bianca, Lucullus and White Silver are among the varieties tagged for September in our seeds to sow in September collection.

Is chard a perennial? Does it come back every year?
No — it is a biennial. Leaves in the first year, flowers and death in the second; "perpetual" spinach is perpetual only within that cycle. For an unbroken supply, sow a short row each April and another in August or September, and the plants overlap.

Why is my chard bolting?
Three causes: a sowing made too early that caught a cold spell in spring, a plant that ran short of water in summer, or simply a second-year plant in May doing what it was always going to do. Cutting out the flower stalk buys a few weeks; the real answer is a fresh sowing. Chard is a wind-pollinated biennial that crosses freely with beetroot, so it is not the beginner's crop for seed saving — tomatoes are, as our new guide to saving tomato seeds explains.

Can I grow chard in a pot or in shade?
Both. Give one plant a pot at least 30 cm deep and wide, or sow a trough thickly for baby leaf, and water more than you think. In the garden, chard produces well with three or four hours of direct sun, and in high summer light shade actually improves the leaf.

Chard rewards very little effort with a very long harvest. Sow a row this week for the first greens of spring and another in April for summer, and you will be cutting leaves and ribs in every month of the year. Fill the rest of the bed from our vegetable seeds or the organic range, check the vegetable sowing calendar for what follows, start with our beginner's guide to growing vegetables from seed, and browse the rest of the growing guides — or all our seeds — for whatever the next bed needs.