I’ll be honest: I am an unashamedly girly girl. I love shoes, I like earrings, and I have a pink filofax. I even have a pair of wellies with pink and blue flowers on them (which I bought because stilettos and the muddy track taking me from student halls to lectures didn’t get on terribly well). So when I found a vegetable which was as girly as I am, I was thrilled.

Swiss chard is the girliest vegetable I know. It comes in a range of colours, including hot pink. Planted en masse, the plants create a horticultural candy stripe. They are just marvellous.

Beefy, manly men reading this post need not be dismayed, however. Chard is also a very strong, masculine vegetable when it wants to be. It grows tall and strapping. It withstands frost and drought, and continues cropping throughout the winter. And it is a hungry beast: demanding regular food.

Growing chard
Chard is a hungry plant, and grows best on a well-manured, moist soil. It is reasonably drought-tolerant, and few pests will go out of their way to eat it. Begin sowing indoors from March, as soon as the light is strong enough, and continue succession-sowing until early August for a continuous crop.

Maintaining chard
Feed every fortnight with comfrey or nettle tea to produce strong, strapping plants. Be careful to wash the leaves well if harvesting shortly after feeding as these homemade fertilisers are not very tasty at all. In very cold winters, protect with cloches or fleece.

Harvesting chard
Cut leaves individually from the plant when they reach a large enough size. You can also grow chard as a cut-and-come-again crop. The finely-coloured stalks make a beautiful celery substitute, as shown above.