🥬
Leafy greens
Silverbeet & Spinach
Silverbeet (chard) is one of the most forgiving vegetables in an Australian garden, true spinach is fussier about heat.
Get your planting dates
This guide covers how to grow, harvest and keep silverbeet & spinach, deliberately without sowing dates,
because the right date depends entirely on your climate zone. GardenBuddy's planting calendar
covers all seven Australian climate zones and will tell you exactly when to sow where you live.
Growing
Silverbeet: full sun to part shade, tolerates poor soil and heat far better than true spinach. True spinach prefers cooler conditions and bolts quickly once it warms up.
Common problems
- Leaf miner tunnels in leaves, remove affected leaves
- Bolting in true spinach once temperatures rise
- Slugs on young seedlings
Harvest
Pick outer leaves regularly, cut-and-come-again, and the plant keeps producing for months (silverbeet especially).
Preserving this crop
Best suited to:
Seed saving
Difficulty: Moderate. Wind-pollinated and crosses readily between varieties of the same species, isolate by distance. Silverbeet is biennial in most climates, it needs a cold period before it will flower and set seed.