Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard

Where Fordhook Giant comes from

Fordhook Giant was introduced in 1934 by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., named for Burpee's Fordhook Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — the same trial farm behind Fordhook lima beans. It's an open-pollinated heirloom of the old green, white-ribbed leaf-beet type (plain green chard strains go back to the 1700s). A few catalogs misprint the year as 1924, but Burpee and the RHS both put its introduction at 1934.

The Royal Horticultural Society gives it an Award of Garden Merit and calls it 'strong, vigorous and very productive.' Nearly a century on, it's still the reference white-stemmed chard that others are measured against.

The productivity benchmark

Fordhook earns its keep on sheer output. It's a big, upright, vase-shaped plant — commonly 24–28 inches tall — with broad, heavily savoyed dark blue-green leaves and thick white stalks that widen toward the base to a couple of inches across. It's a dense, vigorous clump, and in University of Rhode Island variety trials it posted the highest yield among white-stemmed chards and the top overall marketable yield.

It's also a genuine warm-season asset. Chard is a biennial, so unlike lettuce it doesn't bolt from a first summer's heat — Fordhook holds and keeps producing as a bridge green right when spinach and lettuce give up in the heat, then carries on into fall and, in mild-winter zones, through winter.

Mild leaves, tender white ribs — if you catch them young

Fordhook is a two-part vegetable. The leaves cook up like a sturdier, earthier spinach — milder and less 'beety' than the red-stemmed chards. The thick white stalks are the other half: harvested young, they're the tender, delicately sweet part, closer to a mild cross of celery and beet, and they shine in gratins and stem dishes.

The honest catch is timing. Those prized ribs turn tough and stringy if you let the stalks oversize, so the tenderness people praise only holds on younger, medium-sized leaves. Take the outer leaves at about 8–10 inches and keep cutting rather than waiting for jumbo stalks — and cook the ribs a few minutes longer than the leaves, since they're thicker.

Growing Fordhook Giant

Direct-sow 1/2 inch deep once soil passes 40°F (about 2–3 weeks before your last frost), or start indoors 5–6 weeks out and transplant near the last frost. Give it full sun and fertile, organic-rich soil around pH 6.0–7.0. Each 'seed' is a multigerm cluster, so thin to one seedling and space plants 8–12 inches apart in rows 18–24 inches — this is a big variety, so give it the room.

Keep it evenly watered at 1–2 inches a week; it's a heavy feeder, so side-dress with nitrogen mid-season. Begin cutting once outer leaves reach usable size (baby ~30 days, full 50–60), taking leaves 1–2 inches above the crown and always leaving the growing center — keep picking and it produces from early summer into fall. One timing note: it's a biennial, so cold-shocked seedlings that sit through a prolonged cool spell can vernalize and bolt early. Don't rush transplants into a cold spring.

What goes wrong — and the fixes

Beet leaf miner tunnels pale trails inside the big leaves — pick and destroy mined leaves, float a row cover, and rotate away from beets and spinach. Cercospora leaf spot (tan spots with dark borders) shows up in warm, wet weather — space for airflow, avoid overhead watering, and rotate yearly.

Tough, stringy stalks come from letting leaves oversize — harvest outer leaves young at 8–10 inches and keep cutting. Overcrowding and weak plants come from not thinning the multigerm clumps — thin to one seedling and give the full 8–12 inch spacing.

Premature bolting is usually a cold-shocked seedling, not summer heat — set transplants out only after cold snaps pass. And it's only semi-hardy: it takes light frost, but a hard freeze kills the tops (the roots are hardier), so it's long-standing rather than truly frost-proof in cold zones.

In the kitchen

This is the everyday cooking chard: an all-season green for sautés, braises, soups, quiche, and anywhere you'd use a sturdier spinach that won't bolt in summer heat. Picked small at around 4 inches, the leaves make a fine baby-leaf salad.

Cook the two parts separately — the thick white stems want a few extra minutes and are genuinely good in their own right, braised or baked into a gratin. The flavor is mild and mellow, less bitter and less beety than the red-stemmed chards, which makes Fordhook the easy crowd-pleaser of the chard rack even if it never wins a beauty contest.