I have a raised bed in my garden that scantily draw any sunshine in the winter . Whatever ’s rise there in the summer unremarkably stay there until leaping , when the days are longer and I plant anew .
Being a bienniel , that intend my leaf beet is the last of the crops to linger after the eternal sleep of theplants have boltedor died . It bear on to grow pleasant-tasting new folio and sometimes even post out new shoots ( look like little tree trunks ) , while the master “ tree trunk ” gets with child and arboreous and push out of the ground .
Have you ever appear at the root word of a second - year Beta vulgaris cicla and thought … hmm that expect familiar ?
Chard(Beta vulgaris)is also known as foliage beet or prickly-seeded spinach beetroot , and in fact the two share the same botanic name , though chard is specificallyBeta vulgaris v. cicla . The coarse common beet is cultivated for its fleshy root , while chard is cultivated for its foliage .
So what come first , the beet or the leaf beet ?
release out , chard has been in cosmos since at least the fourth century BC — reasonably much since the first written record of food were establish in Europe . It was known as the sea beet(Beta vulgaris v. maritima ) , or unwarranted common beet , originating in the Mediterranean and spreading eastwards into the area we now call the Middle East . ( It still grows uncivilised in these region , and its leaves are so toothsome that it ’s known locally as angry spinach — thus our given name of spinach beet and incessant spinach for those leafy greens . )
The beets that we see today were unknown before the Christian era , though it was believed that the ancients used the roots of the ocean beet for medicinal purposes . Over several 100 , the ocean beet ( harvested chiefly for its leaves ) evolved into a multi - purpose plant as foodie from the Roman Empire start cooking with the conceited roots that were harvested selectively from sea beets .
There would be no public record of beets again until 14th - hundred England , which reveal formula using the root entirely . It was still a infrequency in the 16th one C , when German disc described a red beet with a white turnip - like root . Though the beet remained an unimportant food crop through the next few hundred twelvemonth , cultivation go forward and picked up more popularity when it was brought to the United States in the early 19th century .
Most modern common beet were only inclose to home base garden within the last 150 years , and they now total in a rainbow of colour from dark purple to snow clean ( and my personal pet , Chioggia , which features pinkish and white-hot - striped flesh ) and in a spectrum of conformation from globular to cylindrical . The garden common beet is specifically spawn for its sweet and earthy root , sending all of its energy into develop the theme its first year .
Meanwhile , theciclavariety ofBeta vulgaris(what we ordinarily call chard ) broadcast all of its energy into develop a full point of leafage in its first twelvemonth . Both salmagundi are bienniels , though a chard root will begin to swell ( front like a beet ) at the end of its second year after it ’s produced all of its leaves .
So in theory , chard solution is comestible ( meaning it wo n’t kill you ) as it belongs to the same species as the beet . But since the plant does n’t start developing its root word until the end of its life , the chard root is a grueling , fibrous and caustic trunk , rather than the tender , overweight and earthy root that we harvest from common beet plants . ( Have you ever left a radish in the background too long ? Such ruffianly little suckers they become ! )
Of naturally , if anyone out there actually wants to screen this hypothesis and roast up a chard beginning , please institutionalize me a report on your edible experiment !
