Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ www.teachinggarden.org
Written by Alan Hickman

The pictures of the flooding in south west England these past few days have been a good reminder of how well placed Brampton is. It’s been more than fifty years since anything really nasty has occurred in the immediate neighbourhood. For some reason ‘weather’ passes on the other side of the escarpment or it goes by close to the lakeshore. It’s inevitable that one day there will be another Hurricane Hazel or some other environmental catastrophe but, until it happens, it behooves us all to recognize just how fortunate we have been in this little pocket of Ontario.
Of course, being lucky doesn’t mean that gardeners can’t whine and complain. For the past couple of weeks we’ve had lovely spring weather; nights in the low double digits, mostly sunny days in the low twenties, and enough rain to pull out weeds. It’s a pity we didn’t get this in May/June when we needed it instead of in high summer!
In the vegetable area of Peel Teaching Garden, late July is a time of transition between the early cool-weather crops and the long draw down of the main harvest.
The last of the radishes were eaten a couple of weeks ago and now the remaining peas are starting to toughen up and go floury - good for soups but the fresh flavour of spring has just about gone for another year.The potatoes have not yet completed their growth cycle but, here and there, one or two every day, the first cherry tomatoes are ripening.Bridging the seasons is a vegetable that seems to be not that well known. Swiss chard is a leafy green which, like it’s relative, spinach, can be used either in a salad or it can be steamed and served hot. Chard is also know as silverbeet, the beetroot also being a close relative.
In taste, chard has something of the bitterness of beet greens and a trace of the saltiness of spinach. Both the leaves and the stems - almost rhubarb-like in length and texture - are edible. Young stems, plucked fresh from the garden on a cool morning, are crisp and tasty with few if any stringy bits but, as a cooked vegetable or if chard is store bought, a quick blanching of the stems is probably in order.
As the original home of chard is in the Mediterranean region, hot summers and light open soils support the plant at its happiest. The particular variety in the teaching garden this year is ‘Bright Lights’ which was developed years ago in New Zealand. The plants produce stems in a variety of colours: various pinks, reds, and crimsons, white, yellow and the occasional bright orange. ‘Bright Lights’, from Renee’s Garden, of Felton, California, www.reneesgarden.com is perhaps a little sweeter than some other selections and the stems certainly look attractive in a salad.
As well as looking good on a plate, the rainbow coloured stems and the method of cropping chard fit easily in a home garden. If you haven’t got a separate vegetable patch, any sunny flower border will give chard a home from June through August. As the outer stems are taken off, new leaves grow to keep the beds looking full and tidy.The deep green leaves of chard are rich in essential nutrients. From reading the various write-ups based on the vegetable, eating your Swiss chard will fix everything from bone density through skin cancer; it’ll stimulate healthy liver, heart and lung function, and boost your immune system.
A study reported in the journal Neurology (Morris MC, Evans DA, et al.), called the ‘Chicago Health and Aging Project’ (CHAP), suggested that people who ate 3 servings of green leafy, yellow and cruciferous vegetables each day exhibited a 40% lower rate of age-related mental decline. I’m not really sure, though, whether this means that if you eat your chard you’ll get to be only half as stupid or if less stupid people tend to eat more vegetables!A great advantage of fresh vegetables is that they are quick to cook. Last week, I came home with a couple of cups of cherry tomatoes, mostly splits resulting from the rain, a few carrots and pea pods, and a dozen or so assorted chard leaves. The chard stems, the halved tomatoes and a clove of garlic went into a little peanut oil in a large skillet for a few minutes and then the washed leaves were piled in and the lid was jammed on. The carrots got a quick zap in the microwave, to soften up a bit, and then went into a pan to brown with a couple of Tilapia fillets. The shelled peas were just tossed into a pot of rice to warm through.
After it had wilted down, all the chard needed was a splash of white balsamic vinegar and a grind of pepper. I’m not much for arranging ‘pretty plates’ but, the fish, lubricated with pan juice, resting on a bed of chard surrounded by rice and peas and little piles of chard stems and carrots, ended up looking quite professional. Not bad for a transition supper.

Day +25 H:31 chance of showers UV5 Winds S15km/h P.O.P.70%
Night +17 cloudy chance of showers Winds NE5km/h P.O.P.40%