If ever a plant was eminently suited for container growing, it's chard. Chard - also known as Swiss chard, silverbeet, sea kale beet, leaf beet, and spinach beet - was developed from beets and, in fact, chard is a variety of beet, that is, within the same species. Beets are Beta vulgaris and chard's scientific name is Beta vulgaris var. cicla.

Chard's history as a garden plant goes way back to Ancient Greece and Rome. It is thought to have been developed in Sicily and spread throughout the Mediterranean by those great traders and merchants, the Phoenicians. One of its uses in classical times was as a wrapper for baked eels! I don't think it's used much for this purpose now, but it can certainly be used to wrap baked fish. Mostly, it's used in any of the ways that spinach might be used (except in uncooked salads, for which chard is a bit strong for most people's taste). I use it as a cooked green most of the time (just steam and serve, or use in stir-fries), but I've also used it in a recipe involving rolling up a rice-based filling in chard leaves and baking it, and I use it in quiche and the quiche-like "impossible pies". It can be used as the green in "spinach lasagna" or any other cooked dish calling for spinach. It freezes very well too: just blanch it for a moment, then cool it off, then freeze it in freezer bags or containers.

Chard has large crinkled leaves and broad stalks: those are the edible parts. The taste of the leaves is much like spinach, although a bit stronger, and the stalks are good too. It's much easier to grow a significant quantity of chard (whether in containers or in the ground) than of spinach, in my experience (more on this below). And since it's both decorative and delicious: well, it's a real container-growing winner.

The sad stuff sold in supermarkets, by the way, resembles home-grown chard about as much as a mouse resembles an antelope: i.e., not much. And if you think you don't like chard but do like spinach: there's a variety of chard just for you. It's called "Perpetual Spinach" (because, I suppose, it's neither perpetual nor spinach: aren't plant names a trip?). Perpetual Spinach has a milder taste than other chards, it's quite a bit more spinach-like. For me, I love the stronger chards. I'd rank beet greens as my very favorite (cooked) green, with chard a very close second and spinach third. Beet greens are in limited supply though: you cannot grow as many of them as you can of chard.

Some chards are brightly colored: rhubarb chard (also called "Ruby Red") has red stalks and leaf-veins. There's similarly a golden chard, and a multi-colored chard (usually called "Bright Lights"). Bright Lights has stalks and leaf veins of white, gold, red, hot pink, purple, orange, or magenta-and-white striped; and the colors are almost luminescent. It's really something to see, especially if backlit by the sun. I can easily picture a pretty pot with Bright Lights chard in someone's front yard, and passersby stopping to admire it: it's that pretty. For my non-decorative containers though, I grow Fordhook Giant - a plain green-and-white chard because I have found it to be somewhat more robust than the brightly colored chards - it produces more leaves per pot than its more brightly-colored siblings. But even the "plain" green chards are very handsome plants: handsome enough that - if they weren't edible - people would probably be growing them as foliage plants (the way hosta, for instance, is grown).

Now that's you're (I hope) eager to grow this paragon of plants, how is it grown? You'll be happy to hear that chard is a very easy plant to grow in containers. It's a true three-season plant: spring, summer and fall. This is one of the reasons why it's easier to grow an appreciable quantity of chard than of spinach: spinach doesn't like hot summers and tends to die out, but chard just keeps chugging along through the heat. Its leaves are larger than spinach too, and chard is a "cut and come again" plant: cut or snap off outer leaves and stalks, and the plant immediately gets busy making more leaves and stalks for you to eat. By the way, I figure on seven almost-mature chard leaves making a generous one-person serving of greens for dinner (they're very large). The plants have many leaves, and since it will regrow new leaves over and over, you can harvest a reasonable amount of it, even if you only have a single container of chard (but I plant several containers of it each year). It's very, very cold hardy too: one year, chard growing in a container on our deck (totally unprotected - no row cover over it, no plastic over it, nothing) survived until mid-December when the temperature dropped to 12 F (minus 11 C).

I start my chard seeds in early spring, indoors, using my standard seed-starting procedures (an article on which will be put on our website shortly). No special out of the ordinary measures are called for. The little seedlings look limp and floppy, but they'll be OK and thicken and grow once you get them planted out so they need to be planted out fairly young (and cold won't bother them). I transplant mine to their containers when they are about 2-3" high. Plant in your usual soilless mix or potting soil. Chard can also be planted directly outdoors. Then, feed as you would need to feed any container plant, keep well-watered, and watch it grow through three seasons of the year. Chard will need a fair-sized container, as not only is it a big plant, it also has fairly deep roots. I recommend a container at least 12" deep, and 12" in diameter. I grow three or four chard plants in a container that's 14" in diameter. Of course, it can be part of a larger mixed planting too.

That's really all there is to it, except that chard sometimes has one insect pest (only one in my experience anyway). The pest is called 'beet leaf miners' or 'spinach leaf miners'. It's a fly that lays its eggs on the plant's leaves and the eggs develop into larvae that eat 'trails' inside the leaves - the larvae are inside the leaves. You see the trails in the leaves. This spoils the affected leaves (unless of course, you want to eat a beet leaf miner larva!).

I've had varying amounts of trouble with the beet leaf miners: in some locations, my chard was never once bothered by them. Here in northern Pennsylvania, my container-grown chard has a little trouble with leaf miners, but not enough that I bother to take any measures to prevent it: I just discard the few affected leaves. My in-ground grown chard, on the other hand, needs protection from them if I want any usable chard.

Here is a picture of the damage caused by leaf miners, as well as a suggested remedy from Gardens Alive. If your chard does have a problem with leaf miners, there are other remedies as well (some probably available in your local area). Covering your plants with either (small mesh) nylon netting or floating row cover will prevent the fly from laying its eggs on your plants and therefore will prevent the problem. When I cover a container plant with nylon net or row cover, I first make a cage of 1" mesh chicken wire that sits inside the container, then cover the cage with the fabric covering, holding it in place with ground staples at the bottom and clothes pins (UK: clothes pegs) at the top. If you do this for chard (and, again, I haven't found it necessary so far), then you'll need 3' chicken wire: chard can easily be 3' tall.

For decorative containers, though, you would want some other preventive measures. In addition to the remedies suggested byGardens Alive!, in "Heirloom Vegetable Gardening," William Woys Weaver says that insecticidal soap (available at many local garden centers or online) will kill the miners (I haven't tried this myself). (As an aside, Weaver also gives a method of cooking chard that he says will retains its pretty colors.) The Encyclopedia of Natural Insect and Disease Control suggests checking the underside of leaves and scraping off any white eggs with your fingers, also snipping off the affected parts of leaves with scissors to prevent further damage.

Since chard is such a wonderful container plant, we list several varieties on our Cooking Greens page. I hope you'll add chard to your plans for your next container garden so that you can enjoy its great taste as well as its good looks.