GardenSwiss Chard variety
Intense Swiss Chard
✓ In your garden
Intense is a red Swiss chard, ready in about 50 days. Pick the outer leaves and it keeps coming all season — one of the few greens that shrugs off summer heat. Cook the leaves like spinach and the colorful stems like asparagus.
“A colorful, cut-and-come-again green that takes the heat.”
Growing basics — shared by every swiss chard
Intense grows like any other swiss chard. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Swiss Chard page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 6–12 in
- Row spacing
- 18–24 in
- Planting depth
- 0.25–0.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Water
- Moderate
What is Intense good for?
- Sautéed & soupsWilts down rich. Great
- The colorful stemsCook them like asparagus. Great
- Raw (young leaves)Baby leaves for salad. Great
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Intense in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around early May, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- early Mar – mid Mar
- Toughen up outside
- early Apr – mid Apr
- Move plants outside
- mid Apr – mid Apr
- Plant seeds outside
- mid Mar – late Mar
- Growing
- mid Apr – early May
- Picking
- early May until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Intense — the things that trip people up
- Chard is a cut-and-come-again green: pick the outer leaves and leave the center growing, and one planting feeds you spring through fall.
- It’s tougher than spinach — it takes summer heat without bolting and shrugs off light frost, so it’s one of the longest-cropping greens in the garden.
Intense swiss chard at a glance
| Type | Red |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 50 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Red |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Intense
How long does Intense take to grow?
About 50 days, and you can pick baby leaves even sooner.
Does Intense come back after cutting?
Yes — it’s cut-and-come-again. Take the outer leaves and it keeps producing new ones for months.
Browse more swiss chard varieties →