Greens

There is a nearly endless variety of greens that you can grow in the home garden. Some are very common and easy to locate and some like the Perpetual Chard Spinach Beet are much less well know, but indispensable to the kitchen garden.

Perpetual Chard Spinach Beet - a member of the
beet family, like all the other varieties of chard, but a distinctively different plant. Perpetual Chard is more spinach than chard in flavor and more chard than spinach in cultivation. The full sized leaves remain sweet and edible when raw and make a delightful addition to summer salads.

I companion plant it with peas in early spring and do little else but water and eat it well into winter. Seed it closely in rows about 12" apart with a self supporting bush pea like Progress #9 or Cascadia planted in between the rows. Thin the Perpetual Chard plants to about 9" apart as they grow. When the peas are done in late spring do not pull them out! Mash down the plants and use them as mulch between the rows of chard. As the pea roots and vines decay the released nutrients are used to maintain your Perpetual Chard.