Dealing with a Glut of Chard & Spinach

Chard keeps cropping for months and spinach boltsA plant switching early into flowering and seed production, usually triggered by stress, after which leaves, roots or bulbs turn bitter or unusable. Full page → within weeks, so the two do not glut in the same way. Chard is picked little and often. Spinach is sown in staggered batches timed away from the longest days, which are longer in Scotland than in the south of England.

Chard and spinach are not the same shape of glut

Chard is a cut-and-come-again crop. Sown outdoors from April to July, it gives pickings for several months and harvests for most of the year. Take the outer leaves and cut cleanly at the base, and the plant keeps sending up more from the centre. Established plants can be cut back hard, leaving at least 5cm above the base, and will regrow. A second sowing in mid-summer overwinters outdoors, and clochesA small, portable clear cover placed over an individual plant or short row to trap warmth and keep off wind, rain and pests. Full definition → may bring a few leaves in mild spells. In hot weather chard may bolt, and once it flowers in earnest the leaves stop being worth picking; taking off flower stems as they appear may buy a few more weeks.

Spinach reaches harvest quickly: baby leaves in as little as a month and mature leaves in two. The productive window afterwards is short. Spinach is a long-day plant that flowers as days lengthen, and it also bolts in hot, dry weather, when short of water, after the disruption of transplanting, and sometimes in cold conditions. Day length is the trigger most likely to catch out a bed sown on a southern timetable. At the June solstice Edinburgh has about 17 hours 36 minutes of daylight against about 16 hours 38 minutes in London, close to an hour more, so spinach here may be pushed towards flowering earlier than a UK-wide guide assumes, even in a summer that is not hot. The mechanism is explained in day length and plant growth, and further north the gap is wider still.

Does picking more encourage more growth?

For chard, yes: regular picking of outer leaves keeps the plant producing, and light, frequent harvests are the recommended method.

For spinach, generous picking gives more leaves in the short term. Cutting plants right down to about 2.5cm above the soil lets them regrow more than once. This only delays bolting, though, and once day length and temperature tip a plant towards flowering, no amount of picking holds it back for long. Hard harvesting buys days, not months.

The more reliable lever is timing. The sowing window runs from March to mid-June (Garden Organic) or mid to late spring (RHS), with a second sowing in late summer to early autumn for hardy types. Summer sowings tend to bolt. Sowing in spring so the crop is picked well before midsummer, and again from late summer once days are shortening, keeps the plants clear of the longest days. Light shade in warm weather keeps the soil cooler, and spinach is a thirsty crop that needs watering in dry spells, in the early morning rather than the evening. 'Amazon' resists bolting and 'Missouri' is slow to bolt. Neither shade nor variety removes the trigger, so the timing does most of the work. Sowing depth, spacing and variety choice are in the spinach growing guide.

Chard and spinach at a glance

PerpetualA strawberry type that produces smaller flushes of fruit continuously through the season, rather than one large crop over a few weeks. Full definition → spinach (spinach beet) is a leaf beet rather than true spinach, and can give harvests for up to a whole year, so it behaves like chard rather than spinach. If bolting keeps wrecking spinach sowings, perpetual spinach is the easier substitute.

Succession sowing: essential for spinach, optional for chard

Each spinach sowing has a narrow window before it bolts, so short sowings every few weeks turn one hard deadline into a rolling supply. A run of small sowings through spring and again from late summer into autumn gives several windows either side of the solstice, rather than betting everything on one sowing that may or may not land clear of the trigger. Succession planting for beginners covers the technique.

Chard does not need it. A single spring sowing is slow to bolt and keeps producing on its own; the July sowing is there to carry the supply into autumn and winter, not to dodge a bolt. The bolting explainer covers why annual crops flower in response to heat, drought and long days.

When the bed outpaces you

Picked leaves keep only a few days. Kept unwashed, dry and cool, in a fridge crisper drawer for most kitchens, they are best used within that time. Storage will not absorb a glut for long. A bed that keeps producing faster than a few days' eating is better managed by picking earlier, picking less, or sowing less in each go.

Bolted spinach is finished: the leaves may turn bitter and the plant stops making usable growth. Pull it, add it to the compost and use the space for a late-summer sowing or another crop.

Common questions

Sources