Perpetual Spinach chard

[Beta vulgaris] – Also called spinach beet, this chard dates back to the 1700s. It has been our family’s main spinach substitute for years. It has nearly all of spinach’s advantages, with none of its downsides: nutritious, good in salads or as a cooked green, but with a slightly milder flavour and larger leaves. The crucial advantage is that the plants don’t bolt in their first summer, because, like beets, it’s a biennial. So you can eat it from spring until fall, and it’s impressively tolerant of both heat and cold, so it’s one of the longest-season greens you can grow.