- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to Huw's Nursery,
and in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to grow
my favourite vegetable, which is Swiss chard.
(gentle music)
The great thing about growing Swiss chard
is that you can basically harvest from it
all through the season.
It is quite a hardy plant, but we need to make sure
is that especially during the winter months
and if you get some cold spells like we do,
we had a frost of about minus three degrees Celsius
last night.
So if it does get frosty, it's best to protect them
either with a cloche or you could put on a thick layer
of mulch such as hay, and what this will do
will just ensure that during the coldest parts,
it will be protected from the frost
and then when it warms up a bit
and you can remove this mulch
and then during the early spring months
you'll be able to get fresh pickings of Swiss chard.
Firstly, Swiss chard likes a slightly acidic soil,
and for planting there are a few options
for when you can plant them during the green season.
The first one is around your last frost date in the spring.
You can plant those directly into the ground
or you can start them a bit earlier under cover
in plugs and then transplant them out
to their final places,
or you can plant Swiss chard around midsummer
or around eight weeks before your first frost date.
Now this is if you want to have a harvest
during the early stages of autumn
and then, like I said before in the video,
as long as it's under cover, such as under a cloche,
or you're protecting it with mulch,
or by doing this, you're protecting the plant during winter
so when you remove the mulch,
you'll actually be able to have fresh harvest of Swiss chard
during the hungry gap which is an added benefit.
If your raised bed needs a quick till,
then go for that.
And the way we're growing Swiss chard is great
because we're building soil at the same time.
Now, we're growing rainbow chard, and this is fantastic.
Especially if you have an ornamental garden,
you can get away with growing these as an annual
because their colour contrasts are truly magnificent
with the stems.
So looking here at the seeds,
each seed is actually a cluster of a few true seeds
which is really interesting,
so you might have to thin out a bit later on.
So what we want to do is give the raised bed
a good soaking, especially if it's bone-dry
because we're going to be retaining moisture
with the mulch a bit later on.
So our spacing is very simple.
Just make one-inch holes, so 2.5 centimetres deep,
and make these about eight inches, or 20 centimetres apart.
And then each row should be spaced at around a foot
or 30 centimetres, and you can bring this in a bit closer,
but we found that that's a really good distance
for planting.
Now if you have lots of seeds,
it won't hurt to plant a couple of seeds into each hole.
So if there's more than one seedling,
you can thin it out to the strongest one,
or you can just leave it, let it grow,
and see what happens.
The great thing about growing your own food
is that you have the freedom and you can be creative
and try new things, and just always have an emphasis
on enjoying growing your own food.
And who knows?
You might find something that works better.
So here, we're mulching with grass clippings.
You can use other mulches.
Now this protects and builds the soil.
It also prevents weeds which is an added benefit,
and it also reduces watering, which saves so much time,
so apply a two-inch, five-centimeter thick layer,
you can see lovely colours here,
and just let them grow, and they'll quickly develop.
Then you can either harvest the small stems
or the bigger stems, and you snap or cut off the stems
when you need them.
So thank you very much for watching this video.
I hope this has shown you exactly
how you can grow Swiss chard at home.
And if you have any further questions or comments,
then I'd love to see them either in the comments section
or on Snapchat.
Now just before you go, I just want to say a huge thank you
because Monday last week I uploaded a video
on my Facebook page showing people how to grow peas
in 60 seconds, and that has had a huge response,
and so far, has had 1.4 million views.
So thank you very much.
And I'm gonna do more short tutorials on Facebook
coming soon.
So stay tuned for that.
Thank you once again for watching,
and I'll see you again very soon with another video
showing you how you can grow food inexpensively at home.
Goodbye.