On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:52:42 -0400, songbird
wrote:

the package says "average soil" which around
here the average would be hard as a rock right
now and mostly clay.

No, that's "poor" soil.

fertile: loamy
poor: sand/adobe
average: everything in between those two

Ma asked me what it was like and i said,
"Yummy, like beets, but greener!"

When I grew chard, what I found was that it had an inverse
relationship to eating healthy. Prolly because everyone I asked about
how best to prepare it responded with "first, fry up some bacon..."

like this, but now it's in. i'm looking
forwards to learning yet another thing this
year.

Every year, I like to try growing a few things I didn't grow
previously. Not merely a different variety of something, but an
entirely new thing. This year, it's Okra and Rhubarb. Also looking
to pickle cucumbers, so growing types good for that. Last year was
Cardoon and Eggplant.

Dang good thing I've got the space to grow lots of things.

i think they will be a good refuge type plant
for the good bugs.

You're welcome to think that. As a point of reference though, leaf
miners - a maggot-like larval stage of certain species of flies and
other insects, ends up eating the tissue from between the thin outer
skins (epidermus) of the leaf to the point that the leaf would be
transparent, excepting for the frass the critters expell, will love
'em. Stay on top of that, cutting off and destroying leaves showing
that type of damage. They'll also attack beets and spinach too.

should be in the full sun or close to it.
shaded a little right now by flowers and some
trefoil, but i can trim that back if it looks
to be taking over.

Mine were always in the full sun.

let grow untouched first year and harvest
next year?

It's a biennial - you want to harvest it while it has good leaves, but
before it goes to seed, at which time things will turn bitter. On
plants which yeild leaves which can be harvested without killing the
plant, I let them establish sufficiently, then I harvest a few leaves
here and there. When you have multiple such plants, it's usually easy
enough to harvest without setting them back.

Are these biannual like beets?

They're so like beets that they share the same pests and can cross
pollinate (if you save seed, you should pay close attention to that,
because the next generation of beets (those from the saved seed) may
very well not actually produce a beetroot, though they may appear to
have beet greens).

says the seeds want even moisture for sprouting, that might be a challenge in
sandier soil.

Most plants like even moisture. If it's an issue for you, start them
in germination trays, then transplant out when they're big enough.

how hardy are they when it gets hot and dry?

They'll need water. I use drip irrigation for all my raised beds (on
an irrigation timer), as well as some moveable runs in the in-ground
garden (moveable because the larger space is subject to crop rotation
as well as tilling).

do they get deep tap roots?

My plants grew to about 8' tall (from the level of the soil), and were
in a raised bet with less than 16" of soil depth, and a fabric
weed/root barrier on the bottom. They did wonderfully well there, but
the soil was well amended with organics. They were a bear to pull up
when I went to remove them, but they didn't have a carrot-like taproot
scaled to accomodate their topside growth either.

My native soil is sandy loam. It is plenty fertile (doesn't hurt
being in an area where there was chicken farming for a long time), but
to improve the tilth, I amend that with vast quantities of organic
compost. For my 4K+ square foot garden, I have 40 cubic yards of duck
manure and rice hull compost on order right now (the last go was 20
CY), waiting for the delivery driver to get over his unease about
driving across the property after the rains). Lots of compost
improves almost everything.

flower second season? spread by root division?

Propagate by seed.

i know i can look this up on-line, but this is
a conversation space.

Why not look up the basic traits online, then ask for discussion about
best practices and experiences?

teach me, i'm a grasshopper at your knee.

Gaaa! Locusts! Get the torches!