Permaculture: Design your Paradise

Rainbow Chard

To be honest, flavorwise I prefer true spinach (Spinacia oleracea) over silver beet (Beta vulgaris) any day. I also like to use the tender young spinach leaves in salads and find silver beet a bit tough for this.

But I still grow lots of silver beet every year, and if you look at the picture you'll easily guess why: It makes such a striking feature in my kitchen garden.

Silver beet is also referred to as Swiss Chard, and the colored varieties have names like Ruby Chard (pictured above) and Rainbow Chard. Rainbow Chard is a mixture with yellow, orange, pink, purple and red stems.

Silver beet has another advantage over spinach: It is a lot more heat tolerant and is a good substitute during the hottest months of the year when your delicate English spinach fails.

The seeds of silver beet are large and irregular shaped, and every seed will grow into multiple seedlings. I start them in small pots and separate the seedlings when they are big enough to handle. By then they also show their true colors, and I can find the perfect spot in my garden where they will complement the surrounding foliage and flowers, instead of causing hideous color clashes.

A word of warning: Silver beet is one of the greediest vegetables around, its appetite for nitrogen is insatiable. To look and taste its best it should be planted in fertile humus rich soil, and then still fed regularly with a high nitrogen fertilizer such as pelleted chicken manure.

Do that and you will enjoy an edible colorful display for many months.

Purple Mustard

This is one of my favorite salad greens, or would that be salad purples? There are slight variations, like the Red Giant (Brassica juncea) or Osaka Purple (Brassica juncea var.rugosa), but they all have one thing in common: They are a stunning addition to any garden.

Mustard is easy to grow and germinates readily. Seed packets contain hundreds of little seeds, so I never bother to start them in punnets. They can be shallowly seeded directly where they are to go, and thinned later. (Don't forget to eat the thinnings!).

Start picking the outside leaves at 40 days and the plant will continue to produce new leaves. With their peppery flavor the leaves add zest to your fresh garden salads. They also make it look so much more appealing then just boring green lettuce.

Last year I used purple mustard in a border on my driveway, with skyblue ageratum and salvias and orange cosmos. It seems a daring color scheme, but against my blue house, which is surrounded by terracotta colored concrete, it worked a treat.

So go and be daring! Add some spice to your borders and to your salad bowl!