rainbow chard Swiss chard leaf beet it's all the same plant and it's so easy to grow and so so versatile if you're not subscribed to us at learn how to garden there's a link above me right now click that link and input an email address it means you get access to the written posts that learn how to garden we can let you know every single time we put up a new film you'll find out information about our gardening club and the unique courses that we run online deliver to your computer you're looking at a bed of rainbow chard so-called because of the color look at this color you've got the really dark blood-red here you've got the pinks you've got the vibrant orange you've got a yellow through here you've got the classic white and what's brilliant about this is that the color comes all the way up that stem and into the leaves what I like about that is that this isn't a plant that can just be used like it is here in a raised bed nine inches apart for the maximum production of its stems and its leaves it can also be used in a flower border you grow hostas hostas then have a patch on this I mean I know you can eat them but they taste awful this tastes wonderful it's a brilliant substitute for spinach so I'll show you how to serve it and then what happens after so we've seen all the different colors that the rainbow chard will come in when it arrives if you open your packet you'll find that when you pop the seeds onto your hand they're all exactly the same color same size you have no idea but what's really interesting about child seeds the same as beetroot seeds is that each one of these seeds is a mini cluster of seeds there could be three to four seeds in each cluster and more than one might germinate so I've always found the best way with chard is to actually grow it in one of these cell trays which has individual shells so all you do fill the cells with a good multi-purpose compost you don't need to see compost for chard then take your finger press it roughly a centimeter deep take a single seed pop that into the cell once you've done that then take this out a minute some fine compost just to cover it I've done all of them except those last to make sure that it's covered up to the top now with something like charge you want to make sure that it's watered really well which is why it's sitting in this old baking tray I'm now going to fill the baking tray with water so it just sits under the lip of the module trade leave the modules in there for about 20 minutes half an hour until the whole of the surface is glistening with water we then take the module tray out of the baking tray leave it somewhere to dry in fact I said dry what I mean is drain but then again I'm using the wrong words this is a roasting tray non baking tray so we're using a roaster old roasting tray it's old well it wasn't old when I first stole it obviously now the kitchen it was quite useable we're going to leave that to glistening then we'll take it out let it drain then you pop it somewhere like a cool greenhouse and after about 14 to 21 days you'll start to get decent germination now you can see we've got one here to one two to one three and that's all with single seeds we've got one certainly germinating here and by growing them in means these individual modules what we can do is let this grow until we can see the color now at the moment this looks as though every single one of these is going to be golden well that won't be the sort of case as they get slightly taller you can see the color you'll see the pink we'll see the deep reds and you'll see the golden ones and they'll even be some white ones in fact if you were growing chard for nothing other than to eat so all you wanted was purely for the kitchen then I'd say say grow the white stemmed variety because I think the stems of that have a slightly superior flavor but we're actually growing this so we can get it to do more than one job so once those little plants are about three to four centimeters high it can go out into a bed this is planted in a block nine inches apart and that's for the maximum production of both leaf and stem now in France they grow it mainly for the stem that's what chefs love over here I tend to grow it mainly for its leaves but we do do both but whatever you're doing you need to pick whole stems at the time so you take a stem off just like this and if you're going to use this as a spinach substitute it's really easy you can just strip the leaf but it's more robust than spinach and I think has in some ways far more uses 9 inches apart but you could grow it in the container you could grow as we've said in the flower border and all you have to do is look out for this this is a flowering stalk now it'll funk it'll grow for you for well over a year if it starts to put up a stalk like this flower stalk all you have to do is cut that off then you'll probably get another two to three months of production out of this plant it's got no slug pellets in there and as you can see there's very little damage it's without doubt one of the easiest and most rewarding and versatile plants you can grow that's leaf beet Swiss chard and this particular amazing variety is called rainbow children