Growing chard - my advice and feedback

One day I became an involuntary witness of a conversation between the seller of the vegetable department and the customer who made me smile.

"Do you have chard?" Asked a middle-aged woman.

"No, we have no supplies from Mongolia," the young man confidently replied, laying out small cabbage cabbages on the shelf. He was sure that he knew everything about vegetables, but he "pierced": the beetroot with the name, consonant with the name of the Asian country, was unknown to him. As, I think, and many other people.

The sowing is carried out by rows with a distance between them 10-15 cm, and between plants I observe the interval 5 see. In the future, I thin the planting, increasing the gap to 10 cm. Torn vegetables I use in salads.

For autumn harvesting, chard can be planted for 4-6 weeks to the expected (according to the average data of several previous years) dates of the first autumn frosts.

Beets were marine

Meanwhile, the birthplace of an ancient plant species, called sea beet, is the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was known in ancient Greece, and the ancestors of modern Italians called it Roman grass. Today, this is perhaps the most useful early herbs, which are superior in nutrition and healing properties to the roots of beetroot.

Mangold is a biennial culture. In the first year, it forms a rosette with large leaves, often wavy, bubbly or curly. In the second year, a flower stalk grows, on which small greenish flowers and then seeds develop.

Depending on the variety and color, chard is with red, yellow, green and silver petioles.

They have this plant wide (5-7 cm). During the vegetation period from 1 sq. M. m can be obtained up to 10 kg fresh leaves and petioles.

Crop of chard

I dig a bed for a chard in the autumn, but I don’t break the lumps of soil. In the spring I scatter compost or humus throughout the entire area allotted for this culture - 1 bucket per square meter. m and 2 more glasses of ash. After that, I dig the earth again.

Seeds before sowing soak for 3 days, placing them in a damp cloth. But you can sow and dry seeds. Sowing is carried out no later than 10-15 May. If you do this before, then the bed should be covered with a film. However, it should be remembered that low air temperatures during early sowing can cause flowering of plants.

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See also:  Leaf of beetroot chard (photos) - planting and care

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Care chard

Chard unpretentious, and it facilitates its cultivation. He prefers light areas, is hygrophilous and demanding of food. In cloudy weather, it is enough to water this plant once a week, but in the drought the periodicity of moistening grows to 2-3 times.

Irrigation can be combined with top dressing. Twice a month it is necessary to reinforce plants with infusion of various herbs (the so-called green fertilizer) or a solution of the mullein, which can be replaced with chicken litter (in both cases, the concentration is -0,5 l per 10 L of water).

Note

Large leaves of chard, growing a large rosette, whose height reaches 60-70 cm, perfectly suppress any weed vegetation.

When the plants reach a height of 20 cm, you can start cutting the leaves together with the petioles. Do this on the outside edge of the outlet, without leaving columns (hemp), otherwise they will start to rot, infecting healthy leaves. The more often we cut the greenery of chard, the more it grows.

Like beetroot, chard has a dangerous pest - a mining fly. Its larvae can gnaw small passages in the leaves. Having noticed leaf plates affected by this pest, be sure to tear them off. Chemical methods are not suitable due to the possible ingress of hazardous toxic substances into greens intended for consumption. In addition, if you often harvest, insects simply will not have time to penetrate the leaves, which means that the problems will be solved by themselves. Weeds also need to be weeded out, especially the quinoa, as a mining fly can cross over to these plants.

Winter Harvest

All the winter I have fresh chard leaves on my table. I'll open a little secret. In the autumn until frosts I dig out the plants (2-5 pcs.) With a clod of earth, cut off the tops and transplant each of them into a flower pot of large sizes.

In winter it is better to grow chard in the dark. This will positively affect the quality of the leaves: they are much more tender than grown in the light.

The design

This plant is very decorative, it can decorate the garden, the front garden of both early and late seasons. In the beginning of the summer, neighbors can assign him the pansy, gaylar-diu, calendula. At the end of summer and in autumn, rudbeckia and tall plants like wormwood and fennel grow well in the company with chard.

Mangold - benefits and properties

The ancients believed that chard leaves have the ability to renew blood, and this is confirmed by modern research. So, isoleucine, the amino acid responsible for the synthesis of hemoglobin, is 3 times more in leaf beets than in the canteen.

In general, the leaves and petioles of this plant are rich in vitamins, proteins and mineral salts. Especially a lot of calcium, phosphorus and iron. It is useful to use chard with diabetes mellitus, urolithiasis, anemia, hypertension, to improve liver function, strengthen immunity. And the pulp from the root is a good remedy against baldness.

Thanks to a complex of useful substances, as it was recently established, the use of leaf beet can be a good prevention of cancer, especially colon cancer.

But chard is also contraindicated. Vitamin K, contained in the leaves, increases the viscosity of the blood, leads to an increase in platelets. Therefore, it is undesirable to use 8 food for people with thrombophlebitis and varicose veins.

Welcome in the kitchen

Chard is a source of fiber necessary for our body. Both leaves and juicy fleshy petioles are used for food. They are boiled, fried with breadcrumbs and served as a side dish, for example, with pasta or as an independent dish.

In summer, I use leaves in salads, vinaigrette, borsch, beetroot, carcass in oil, like spinach. Leaves can be sour with cabbage, or separately. The cherries are marinated like cucumbers, slicing and inserting them vertically into a liter jar.

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See also:  Mangold: autumn planting and growing

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I offer recipes for dishes and preparations using chard.

Salad of leaves and petioles

Required: 500 g of leaves with petioles, 1-2 heads of onions, 2 boiled eggs, 3-4 tbsp. l vegetable oil, lemon juice, salt, sugar, pepper - to taste.

Young chard in the cold water 10-15 minutes, beat with boiling water, squeeze, grind. Add finely chopped onion, salt, pepper, sugar, lemon juice. Stir with vegetable oil and sprinkle with chopped eggs.

Natural chard

Required (for pouring): 1 L of water, 20 g of table salt.

Young leaves and petioles collected before the formation of flower stems, cut and densely packed in jars. Pour hot brine, sterilize (10-15 minutes after boiling for liter and up to 10 minutes for half-liter cans) and immediately roll up.

I use these canned food as a cold snack. Before consumption, it is necessary to separate the leaves and stems from the brine and season with vinegar, crushed garlic and dill.

Pickled petioles

I cut the petioles to the length corresponding to the height of a liter jar. I tightly fill them with this glass container prepared for canning, pouring greens of dill, garlic, currant leaf. In each can I add salt (1 tsp), sugar (2 tbsp), 9% table vinegar (3 tbsp) and cold water.

Sterilize 10 minutes after boiling the water in the pan in which the jars are shipped. Immediately roll up.

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MANGOLD - GROWING, PLANTING AND CARE - TIPS AND FEEDBACK

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MANGOLD: RAINBOW IN THE GARDEN

This season I tried to grow chard for the first time. To be honest, it was not so much the description of the nutritional value of the vegetable that was hooked, but the decorative type of the plant.

In the fall, for digging, I brought in 5 kg of humus and 200 g of dolomite flour per 1 square meter of land.

She sowed Swiss chard seeds in the first half of May immediately in open ground, left 45 cm between rows. A week later, friendly shoots appeared. After the formation of two true leaves, I thinned the plants, leaving 25 cm between them. I began to collect the leaves 45 days after sowing, when they reached a length of 20 cm. And the more often I plucked the foliage, the more magnificent the bush became.

FACT: MANGOLD IS BETTER DEW WHEN THE AIR TEMPERATURE WAS KEEPED AT + 20 + 24 DEGREE IN DAYTIME. IN THE HEAT, THE PLANTS STOPPED TO GROW, AND THE STINGES BECAME BITTER. IN A DROUGHT FROM LACK OF MOISTURE, SOME PLANTS RELEASED FLOWERS. VARIETIES WITH WHITE STALKES AND GREEN LEAVES PROVE MORE TOUGHT.

CHOOSING A VARIETY OF MANGOLD

Added leaves to salads, beetroot, vegetable stew. Used for making dolma and cabbage rolls. To the taste, I liked juicy sweet and sour petioles rather than leaves.

By the second half of July, the chard had grown tall and bright. Large leaves with thick petioles of red, yellow and creamy white looked like a rainbow in the beds. And then I thought that this plant could quite harmoniously fit into a flower garden. Why not?

She grew several varieties of Swiss chard, of which I liked the following most.

Charlie - early (45 days from germination to harvest), with slightly bubbly green oval leaves. The narrow petioles and veins on the leaves are deep red, the foliage is green.

Gold - mid-season (90-100 days from germination to the beginning of cutting the leaves). Reaches a height of 65-70 cm. The leaves are green, and the petioles and veins are bright yellow.

The bride is a mid-season variety (55-65 days before the start of the mass harvest), the plant reaches 60 cm in height. Petioles are wide, fleshy, creamy white.

© Author: Julia KUPINA, pos. Leninsky Shebekinsky district.

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chard has tops more steep than roots

Perhaps not everyone knows: table beets are quite edible and tops. Moreover, in young tops there is 1-5 times more vitamin C than in roots. The same can be said about the brother of beets - chard, in terms of the composition of amino acids, it is 2-2 times richer than it.

For chard, you don’t even need to allocate a separate bed, two or three plants are enough, which can be planted somewhere on the edge. Or even in a flower garden. Chard is handsome, especially scarlet.

HOW TO SOW IT

In the middle lane, in the Urals and Siberia, it is better to sow chard in the second or third decade of May, or even later - until mid-June, when the earth is still wet and at the same time well warmed up.

Fertile and loose loamy soils are most suitable. And poor sandy loamy ones need a generous filling with organic compost or old humus (5 kg / m2). Be sure to add wood ash (200 g/m2). Chard is especially fond of boron and magnesium.

In order to get seedlings faster (after 5-8 days), the seeds are soaked for a day in warm water before sowing, changing 2-3 times to fresh water.

Sowing - in moistened grooves, to a depth of 3 cm. The distance between the grooves and rows is 35 cm. Between plants - 10 cm. Seedlings will be friendly if the finished crops are covered with white non-woven material for a couple of weeks.

You can grow chard through seedlings, then the plants will “come into force” faster, the crop can be harvested earlier.

DON'T FEED, DON'T EAT

Chard should be fed, especially on poor sandy soils, alternating complex mineral with organic fertilizers. They do this in the phase of one or two true leaves, three weeks later and in the second half of July. In drought - watering with loosening the soil, especially heavy. And, of course, you need regular weeding.

sprayed with a strong infusion of wood ash (a full glass is infused for 12 hours - in 5 liters of hot water).

You can protect chard (and beets) with sticky cartons, which are sold just for catching small winged insects, including white-winged ones. They are hung on pegs around the beds.

CHARD IS A REAL DELICATE

To cut the first leaves of chard begin a month after germination. The most delicious are the youngest, with regular feeding they lag behind very quickly. Therefore, during the season they can be cut many times. The main harvest - entirely - is carried out in August, although with repeated June sowings of chard - in the autumn months.

HEALS THE LIVER, IMPROVES MEMORY

In terms of ascorbic acid and protein content, chard is superior to beets. It has a lot of carotene that increases our immunity. In terms of composition and quantity of essential amino acids, it is 2-3 times richer than table beets. Saturated with useful sugars - fructose and glucose, and sucrose, on the contrary, there is little, which allows the leaves to be used for dietary, children's and diabetic nutrition.

Chard is useful for everyone, because it promotes hematopoiesis, dilates blood vessels, cleanses and heals the liver, gallbladder, and kidneys. It also improves memory. It is no coincidence that this is one of the favorite vegetables of the long-livers of the Japanese island of Okinawa, where salads, side dishes, soups and many other dishes are prepared from it daily.

ONLY NOT NITRATE

In overly manured soil, chard is capable of accumulating excess nitrates, especially when shaded. Therefore, it must be grown in the sun, as a last resort with light shading.

This feature is inherent in spinach and many other green crops.

TASTE SPINACH AND ASPARAGUS

The chard does not form a root crop, it has only a tap root. The taste of the leaves is comparable to spinach, and the stems resemble asparagus

© Author: Venedikt Dadykin, agronomist

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CULTIVATION OF MANGOLD - LANDING AND CARE: VIDEO

© Author: Elena I. AKULICH

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