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	SD! : Web boards : Off Topic : "Anyone grow Swiss Chard?" 1 2 Anyone grow Swiss Chard? (12) Sat 16 Aug 08, 11:05 PM 000-810-743 US, 3 yrs  Greetings, all; Anyone grow Swiss Chard? i'm currently trying to nurse three plants through this season, but something is eating the hell out of them, and i can't for the life of me figure out what it is! My gardening books all tell me chard is pest resistant...which is quite obviously not the whole truth if you come here. Has anyone had this problem? i can't treat it until i know what my particular unfriendly is. Thanks for reading and many thanks if you can answer it! slave tora, devoted to Sir N 17 Aug 08, 3:56 AM tangie US(MI), 5 yrs  It's a crap shoot until you find out what's eating them. I'm betting something like a cabbage beetle. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted" Unknown. 17 Aug 08, 4:04 PM 000-810-743 US, 3 yrs  Thanks tangie, i haven't seen any, but i won't put it out of the realm of possibility, by any means. i think it is so strange that my lettuce growing next to it came through unscathed, the chard looks like swiss cheese, not chard. (okay, unforgivable pun, i'm sorry) i'm just cropping the whole row, throwing the plants way away from the garden, and starting over in a different area next year. Thank you for giving me a place to start at, slave tora, devoted to Sir N 18 Aug 08, 9:27 PM little_linnet US, 3 yrs  Try water with a natural soap (something like Dr Bronner's) dissolved in it. About a teaspoon of soap to a quart of water, and you can dump it over the plants or spray it on. It's effective against most pests. Slugs sometimes eat my chard, so you might have those or snails; iron phosphate slug bait (Sluggo is one brand) is harmless to everything but the revolting little molluscs. If you're like me you will find that 3 chard plants is hardly enough. They're a cut-and-come-again crop, meaning if you cut the whole plant off at the base but keep it watered, it will grow back; so if you have enough plants you can always have several growing back while one or two are ready to harvest. I don't know whether you grew yours from seed but do try it; they're really easy. Sow them thickly -- I use a square "patch" rather than a row -- and as soon as they're about 6" tall thin them by pulling them up and eating them. There's very little like baby chard in a salad or wilted over a rice dish with cheese. Krista I may be a blowzy, slovenly slattern, but how can you be drab when you've used a bedazzler to make rainbows all over your blue jeans? (For the record, this makes them more gay, but possibly less feminist.) 19 Aug 08, 12:58 AM 000-810-743 US, 3 yrs  Hello, Krista, Thank you for your thoughtful reply...i haven't seen any snails/slugs out there, but it has been wet enough that i won't preclude them! My grandmother always advocated a saucer of beer laid flush with the ground...the only good use for beer, she'd smirk at my uncles! Natural soaps...is that like castille, or can i use glycerin based home soaps? i've not yet had the chance to eat any swiss chard...this was my first time growing it, as my parents were never interested. i figured that even if i did not like the flavor, it was a beautiful addition to an otherwise drab garden; i grow the brite lites strain from seed. The way you deliciously described your fave ways to eat it made me even more determined to get this right! Thank you again, slave tora, devoted to Sir N 19 Aug 08, 3:24 AM tangie US(MI), 5 yrs  If there are slugs, I've heard somewhere along the line to put a little bit of beer in a container, and the slugs will be drawn to it. Don't know if it works but it's worth checking out. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted" Unknown. 19 Aug 08, 7:40 AM little_linnet US, 3 yrs  Sadly, the beer trick has never worked for me. It's worked for other people apparently, though, so no harm trying it. Natural soap is any soap that's soap, not detergent. Glycerin soap is fine, except it tends to thicken into a jelly that's hard to spray. I recommend finding a good liquid soap and Dr B's is the best but there are others available (any liquid castile is a good choice, Trader Joes has a cheap brand). Dissolving a solid soap like glycerin will work, though, if you want to dump it over the plants instead of having it in a sprayer. Other great ways to eat chard are shredding larger leaves to ribbons for a salad; sauteeing for an omelet filling; or using the medium-sized leaves to wrap around things, such as sliced lunchmeat (I made roast beef rolls with a yogurt dip the other night that were fantastic) or filling mixtures (chicken salad, leftover rice pilaf, polenta or couscous, shredded carrot and pineapple with some cream cheese and raisins). They're a happy medium between lettuce and beefier greens like kale, mild and pleasant to eat raw but also nutritious. Edited to add: annnnd you need neither completely rip out your chard, nor wait till next year to start again unless you live somewhere particularly inhospitable. If you trim off all the damaged leaves and prevent further damage, new ones will grow; and chard will sprout and grow both in the cold and heat and matures very fast, so even if you want to completely replant from seed, you should have plenty of time. I need to plant some more chard myself. Happy growing. Krista I may be a blowzy, slovenly slattern, but how can you be drab when you've used a bedazzler to make rainbows all over your blue jeans? (For the record, this makes them more gay, but possibly less feminist.) Edited 19 Aug 08, 7:43 AM by little_linnet 19 Aug 08, 5:36 PM 000-810-743 US, 3 yrs  Thank you so much, again, Krista! i've been routinely removing the outer leaves, hoping to encourage new growth and discourage whatever finds my plants so delectable. i do not have a Trader Joe's anywhere near me *drool* but the alt healing shop carries some castille, i'm sure. i am also grateful for everyone's suggestions on ways to eat it...i can easily get bored with only one or two applications for a food, so this should keep me busy. i'm zone 4 up here, bordering on zone 3, so starting from seed is not a very good option. That's why i'm beheading and starting anew. Can you believe i haven't any red tomatoes yet? Lotsa greens, no reds. *sulk* thanks again to everyone who helped, slave tora, devoted to Sir N 23 Oct 08, 10:46 AM Andrin DE, 3 mths  I know, this is two months late, but I just spotted this and so I add it here. My favourite site concerning information about gardening is http://www.bio-gaertner.de, i.e. a German site. Translated it means "eco-gardener". Has tons of useful information. And there it says about Swiss chard: "Mangold wird im allgemeinen nicht angerührt von Schnecken." i.e. "Swiss chard normally is untouched by snails" I'll try to plant one myself, as it is amongst my favourite vegies. (And as always, the deer won't leave me any ) So long Andrin 3 Nov 08, 9:42 PM little_linnet US, 3 yrs  I think you have a different species of snails in Europe from the ones we have in the US, or at least parts of the US. Maybe their taste preferences vary. My mother grew up just outside the Black Forest and she used to tell me about the giant snails, egg-sized, she would catch and play with. She said she would string a string between two sticks and make them be tightrope walkers in her circus She was playing with her pet snails the day her father came home to tell the family they had sponsors to emigrate to the US. (I've only ever found one snail in my yard although the slugs are legion. Actually, the kids found it, and it's one of the biggest I've seen (but not nearly egg-sized). It lives in a jar terrarium on the mantel now and its name is James after the A.A. Milne poem "The Three Friends".) Krista Now I'm going to marry my first wife, then I'm going to divorce her. Now, I know what you're going to say, but stick with me, my story gets better! I'm going to marry my second wife, then I'm going to kill her! Cut her head off! Ah, you weren't expecting that, were you? Third wife, going to shoot her! 3 Nov 08, 10:51 PM Andrin DE, 3 mths  little_linnet wrote: ...the giant snails, egg-sized, .... are these ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_pomatia I love them, they are delicious, but it is tedious to prepare them. Easier to eat them in a good restaurant. little_linnet wrote: I've only ever found one snail in my yard although the slugs are legion. Thanks Krista for teaching me the difference between snails and slugs. In German we only have one word for them. I am pretty lucky: because my garden is surrounded by pure and unaltered nature, I don't have many snails or slugs (indeed the type I see mostly is the giant egg-sized snail). There is abundant wild life that controls their populations sizes, at night their are so many toads, frogs, fire salamander, hedge hawks and others roaming my pastures, that indeed the slugs and snails have a very hard life . To my surprise I even learned this year that their are spiders that are specialized in killing slugs . My enemies are deer and elk (red deer). As my land is in a landscape protected area I am not supposed to have a fence. Well, next year I will try with an (hard to see) electric fence. Might even keep away the guy that stole my pumpkins. I am certain their disappearance isn't the liability of deer. Andrin Next page