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`Ruby chard' is a 'rootless' beetroot
that grows tall, with wide-dribbed, vivid crimson leaves for flower
arrangers, and it cooks with a better flavor than ordinary seakale
beet, and thrives on heavy clays as well as on lighter soils. (Swiss
chard has cream instead of crimson midribs.)
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August sowing brings the first leaves
ready for Christmas decorations and for eating from March, when they
start growing fast, until July. Rich feeding now can make them too soft
for hard winters, so they go best where early potatoes had manure. Dig
in compost or manure before the May sowing to grow them for late
summer, autumn and winter.
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Aim at two inches between the sizeable
seeds in inch-deep furrows fifteen inches apart. Thin to a foot between
plants in staggered rows when the seedlings have three strong leaves.
When picking, always break the leaves off downwards, for cutting means
bleeding, which weakens the plants.
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Ruby chard is cooked in the same way as
seakale beet. Cut the leaf away from the midrib, which, thickly sliced,
takes about fifteen minutes' simmering. The leaf takes less, so should
be put in the pan later.
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Boiling, cabbage-fashion, wastes the
flavor. The best method is to add only two tablespoons of water to
enough shortened midribs to fill a casserole, and cook slowly for half
an hour with chopped onion and a lump of butter or margarine.
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Though the August sowing will succeed
best if some shelter is given in cold gardens, the main enemy of chard
is not frost but the small slugs that spend winter safely eating inside
beet and lettuce hearts, ignoring poisoned baits outside.
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The green Swiss chard is nearly the same.
It is similarly grown and there is a variety called 'Rainbow' or
'Rhubarb Beet' which includes purple and orange leaves, differing only
in color from 'Ruby'. `Spinach Beet' or 'Perpetual Spinach' will be
found under 'Spinach'.
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The best answer to the slugs'
depredations is Fertosan Slug Destroyer, a contact poison of herbal
origin which should be watered on between the rows, when the seedlings
are well up, about three times at fortnightly intervals and again in
October, taking care to keep it off the leaves. This substance acts by
upsetting the way slugs and snails take up copper, and nothing else
takes it up in the same way, so it will not harm worms, hedgehogs,
birds or any other creature, but slug or snail. There was a case of a
doctor's spaniel that got 'hooked' on metaldehyde slug bait and died of
alcoholic poisoning.
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Both the Ruby and the ordinary chards are
very good value in minerals, with 4.02 milligrams per 100 grams of
iron, which is higher than spinach, broccoli or kale, from 2,800 to
14,000 International units of vitamin A, 130 micrograms of riboflavin,
which is nearly three times cabbage quantity, and 38 Mg. of vitamin C,
about five times as much as lettuce. This neglected vegetable is so
easy, and has so few enemies, that it should be in every garden,
especially those where clubroot is a problem and there is need for a
good winter `greenstuff' that can be red or yellow, pink or cream for
floral decorations, as well as a nutritional bargain.
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