This is the bed that used to have Swiss chard and arugula- both going to seed. I still want Swiss chard, but I have an arugula pot for the arugula. Also this bed gets a lot of sun, good for chard not so good for arugula. In winter it wasn’t such a big deal but now that the days are longer…
Ripping out the bed was hard work. I had no idea arugula roots were so deep.
I had about a third of a packet left of five color silverbeet and many Kentucky wonder seeds left.
The back is sowed with green beans, and the front with chard. I’m expecting the chard to need some serious thinning, I oversowed because chard is one of those seeds that sometimes just doesn’t come up.
I also sowed what was left of the chard packet behind the upper Bok Choy and romanesco. Eventually the very back of that bed will also have green beans. In order to get a staggered harvest of beans I’m waiting to sow until the other plants are bigger.
In other seed news, the regular chives are coming up- but the garlic chives are not, so I resowed them.
Chives need darkness to germinate so it’s possible the soil on top wasn’t packed down firmly enough.
I’ll leave you with my neighborhood supervisor who was very interested in all the work I was doing out back.
The Neanderthal Gardens 
I didn’t know arugula had deep roots either. I do not remember it get old enough to bolt either, so maybe it is something it does as it matures.
Does chard get planted fresh each season, or do you sometimes cut back old plants to start over. There was one that appeared in my garden years ago and was very productive. I let the leaves get a bit bigger than they should have been, but was able to get quite a bit of foliage from the single plant! Instead of pulling it out, I cut it down. It regenerated and somehow started the process over again, not just once, but for a few years! I do not know if it was more bitter than it should have been because I have nothing to compare it too. I suppose that, even without blooming, it could have gotten some bitterness from growing from that mature root system. It tried to bolt, but got cut down before blooming.
I’ve only grown chard really for the last year or so- and it was from plants I bought rather then seed and some grew and some didn’t and the ones I pulled out were runty and IDK wrong? Tasty but something was off. So I got some seed and now I’m trying from seed, and if these do well I’ll keep em and just cut em back like you say.
They probably grow better there than here. It does not get hot here, but it does get a bit warm for them through summer. I sometimes like to see how long certain plants will go, and would be tempted to leave chard as long as it continues to produce.