Silverbeet

One of the garden’s dependable everyday vegetables, producing fresh leaves from the home beds and community berm.

A dependable everyday harvest

Silverbeet is one of the quiet workhorses of the garden. We can pick a few outer leaves for a meal and leave the centre growing, ready to produce the next harvest.

It grows both inside the property and out on the Berm Veggie Patch, where passers-by can see useful food occupying an ordinary street edge. Its long season makes it less of a special-event crop and more a reliable part of day-to-day garden life.

Its role in the garden

• Provides repeated harvests of fresh leafy greens.

• Responds well to a cut-and-come-again style of harvesting.

• Extends food production through cooler parts of the year.

• Contributes edible planting to the community-facing berm.

• Returns unwanted leaves and stems to the compost system.

At a glance

Location: Productive beds and Berm Veggie Patch
Plant type: Leafy vegetable; botanically biennial
Harvest: Through much of the year in mild conditions
Botanical name:Beta vulgaris var. cicla
Family: Amaranthaceae
Pollination: Wind-pollinated when allowed to flower
Harvest method: Take the outer leaves and leave the growing centre

Silverbeet may not be the most glamorous crop, but it is exactly the kind of generous, reliable food plant that makes a small garden useful.