Coppicing silverbeet

We had some volunteer silverbeet pop up in our lawn area.  We figured it wanted to grow there so we left it. And grow it did - big and tall. We had silverbeet over 2m high in some spots this year. Plenty of silverbeet was produced. And it was good. Achieving silverbeet security is one of the less challenging tasks for the urban homesteader in Melbourne.

We let the lawn die off over summer (with some help from intensive guinea pig grazing) and so did the silverbeet. In an easy way to clean up productives past their prime we ran the mower over them. This left some stalks that we thought were dead.

But the plants have re-sprouted from the sides of the stubs just like a tree coppicing from the stool.

We are developing a nice little silverbeet crop again.

The perfect low maintenance crop :) Some evidence suggests there are coppiced forests in Europe have been managed in this fashion for thousands of years. Perhaps our coppiced silverbeet will be a cut and come again crop for many seasons to come!