Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable that’s renowned for its nutritional value, and it’s popular with gardeners because it is so easy to grow. It is a cut-and-come-again crop that produces for quite some time and is cold hardy too. If you want to grow Swiss chard in your garden, here’s everything you need to know.
You can also download my How Do I Grow Swiss Chard one-sheet and keep the free resource handy for your reference.
Also known as silverbeet, spinach beet, leaf beet or simply, chard, Swiss chard is a wonderful addition to soup, dip and baked dishes, and it can be sauteed in oil with garlic for a side or a warm salad. The taste is reminiscent of spinach and beet greens, and the stalks come in green, red, purple, yellow and more.
Planting swiss chard seeds indoors is a great way to get a head start on the growing season. With the right setup and care you can grow delicious nutritious swiss chard right in your own home.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about planting swiss chard indoors, from choosing the right varieties to harvesting your greens. Whether you’re a beginner gardener or a seasoned pro, growing swiss chard inside can be an extremely rewarding endeavor.
Why Grow Swiss Chard Indoors?
There are a few key reasons why starting swiss chard seeds indoors is beneficial:
-
Earlier harvest: By planting indoors, you can get greens weeks or even months before your outdoor planting time. This allows you to enjoy fresh chard earlier in the season.
-
Better control Indoor growing allows you to better control factors like sunlight temperature water, and pests. This can lead to healthier, more productive plants.
-
Extended season: Depending on your climate, you may be able to grow chard year-round by moving plants between indoor and outdoor spaces.
-
Fun hobby For many gardeners, growing vegetables indoors is an engaging hobby and a fun way to produce your own food
While indoor growing has its benefits, it’s important to have realistic expectations. Unless you have a large greenhouse setup, you likely won’t produce massive quantities indoors. But you can certainly supplement your grocery supply and learn a lot in the process.
Choosing a Swiss Chard Variety
Swiss chard comes in a diverse range of varieties. When choosing seeds for indoor growing, here are some good options:
-
Bright Lights: This rainbow chard lives up to its name with vibrant red, pink, orange, yellow, and white stems. The tender baby greens are excellent for salads.
-
Fordhook Giant: A classic heirloom with wide white stems and large, savoyed dark green leaves. Great for mature greens.
-
Ruby Red: Deeply colored red stems and deep green leaves. A standard for cooked greens.
-
White King: Extra-large white stems with dark green leaves. High yields.
For baby greens, any chard variety will work well. For full-size plants, pick a cultivar suited to your desired harvest size and timeline.
What You’ll Need
Growing chard inside requires a few supplies. Here’s a checklist of must-haves:
-
Grow lights: LED full spectrum lights work well. Adjustable height is ideal.
-
Heat mat (optional): For consistent germination temps.
-
Seed starting mix: Use a sterile, soilless mix.
-
Containers: Seed starting trays or 3-4” pots with drainage holes.
-
Liquid fertilizer: Look for organic options like fish emulsion.
-
Small fan: To strengthen stems and prevent disease.
-
Seed packets: Choose from recommended varieties above.
-
Spray bottle: For gentle watering of new seedlings.
Steps for Planting Swiss Chard Seeds Indoors
Follow these steps for the best results:
1. Determine Your Planting Date
Plant seeds 4-6 weeks before your target transplant date outside. For most climates, aim to transplant chard outdoors 3-4 weeks before your last expected spring frost. Count backwards from there.
2. Fill Containers with Seed Starting Mix
Moisten the mix, then fill cells/pots. Level off the top but don’t pack it down. Leave about 1⁄2 inch of space at the top.
3. Sow Seeds and Cover Lightly
Place 1-2 seeds in each cell/pot. Gently sprinkle mix over seeds. Cover no more than 1⁄4 inch deep.
4. Water and Place Under Lights
Use a spray bottle to gently water the soil surface without displacing seeds. Place under grow lights 2-4 inches above.
5. Maintain Moisture and Monitor Germination
Keep the soil moist but not saturated until seeds sprout. This usually takes 7-14 days. Thin to 1 seedling per cell once sprouted.
6. Allow Seedlings to Grow
Give seedlings 14-16 hours of daily light. Keep ambient temperatures around 65-75°F. Water when top inch of soil is dry.
7. Harden Off and Transplant Outdoors
Over 7-10 days, slowly expose seedlings to outdoor conditions. Then transplant into garden once frost risk has passed.
With good care, your chard seedlings will thrive indoors and transplant easily outside at the right time. Just be sure to harden them off first!
Ongoing Care Tips
Here are some key things to remember when raising chard inside:
-
Provide at least 10-14 hours of light daily. Swiss chard needs lots of light.
-
Monitor soil moisture and water when the top inch is dry. Chard hates soggy soil.
-
Introduce diluted liquid fertilizer once seedlings are 3-4 weeks old. Use organic options.
-
Monitor for pests like aphids and diseases. Isolate and remove any affected plants promptly.
-
When sprouts are 2-3 inches tall, thin to just one seedling per cell or pot.
-
Introduce gentle airflow daily with a small fan to strengthen seedlings.
-
One week before transplanting, start hardening off plants by setting them outdoors progressively.
With attentive care and optimal conditions, your indoor chard garden will thrive!
How to Harvest Swiss Chard
One of the joys of growing chard is getting to enjoy fresh harvests. Here’s how and when to cut your greens:
-
Snip outer leaves from mature plants as needed with clean scissors or knife.
-
For baby greens, use scissors to cut off the entire plant about one inch from the base.
-
Harvest chard when leaves reach desired size, before they become overgrown.
-
Pick leaves gently to avoid damaging the crown and future growth.
-
Harvest in the cool of morning if possible for best texture and flavor.
-
Eat greens promptly or store loosely wrapped in refrigerator for up to 3-5 days.
-
Some varieties have edible stems that can be chopped and eaten.
With indoor chard, you can enjoy multiple “cut and come again” harvests from each plant over weeks or months!
Troubleshooting Common Problems
Despite your best efforts, issues can sometimes arise when growing indoors. Here are some common problems and fixes:
Leggy, weak seedlings: Light is too far away. Move closer to 4-6 inches from plants.
Slow growth: Temperatures are too low. Aim to keep ambient temps 65-75°F.
Tiny white flies: Likely aphids. Isolate and remove affected plants. Spray others with insecticidal soap.
Curled, discolored leaves: Could indicate disease like damping off. Remove and destroy affected plants immediately.
Bolting: Flower stalk forming prematurely. Cause is often heat/light stress or overmaturity. Harvest affected plants promptly.
Catching problems early allows you to take corrective action and get your indoor crop back on track!
Growing swiss chard from seeds indoors is certainly achievable for both novice and experienced gardeners. With the right setup, conditions, and care, you can have fresh chard greens thriving inside your home. Just be sure to choose an appropriate variety, allow adequate time for growth, and provide consistent moisture, light, and nutrients. Mastering the subtleties of indoor gardening takes practice, but the rewards are well worth it. Get growing!
Types and Varieties of Swiss Chard
All varieties of Swiss chard are the same subspecies of Beta vulgaris. That’s the species that also includes sugarbeets and garden beets. The two types of Swiss chard are the Cicla group, also known as the leafy spinach beet, and the Flavescens group.
Bright Lights is my favorite variety of Swiss chard. It’s an All-America Selections winner, which says a lot. Having grown this variety for years, I’m always amazed at how carefree and beautiful it is in the garden and on the plate. It’s like a painting with all the range of stem colors from red, orange, pink, yellow and white, all in one crop.
Fire Fresh is a fast-growing chard with ruby stems and veins. The leaves are ready to harvest in 23 to 35 days from transplanting, and the plants have a good degree of disease resistance.
Fordhook Giant is an heirloom variety that dates back to the 1920s. It grows as tall as two feet. The leaves are fleshy and well puckered.
Lyon is renowned for its taste. The leaves are lime-green on white stalks. The leaves grow more than a foot long and near 10 inches wide. It is an open-pollinated variety that is ready to harvest in 50 days.
Perpetual is an open-pollinated chard that has tasty, smooth leaves that taste like spinach and are ready to harvest in 50 days. It produces all summer and can last for many years in zone 7 and warmer climates. The plants grow 20 inches tall.
Red Magic is a hybrid with cranberry red stems and veins. It is a hybrid that grows up to 18 inches tall. It reaches maturity in about 60 days.
Rhubard is a chard variety that is so named because it has thick red stalks like rhubarb. However, unlike rhubarb, this chard has deep red veins in the leaves. It is an heirloom and is ready to harvest in 60 days.
Like most vegetables, Swiss chard requires an inch of water per week. If rainfall does not provide that much water in a week’s time, make up the difference with supplemental watering. A drip irrigation system works well to ensure Swiss chard gets the moisture it needs for consistent growth. If hand watering, be sure not to get the plants wet. Wet foliage promotes disease. Instead, apply water at the base of the plants, under the leaves.
If you have soil that is rich in organic matter and you fertilized with a slow-release organic nitrogen source at planting time, there won’t be much else that Swiss chard ever needs from you. If your soil is poor or you want to promote more vigorous growth, you can continue to apply blood meal, feather meal or cottonseed meal at the manufacturer’s recommended rate of application — or less often. Using more fertilizer than recommended is likely to have an adverse effect on plants, so don’t go overboard. I like to use fish emulsion, which is an organic liquid fertilizer. Just make sure that if using a fish fertilzer on chard that the first number in the NPK ratio is the highest. For example, a 5-1-1 fertilzer has more nitrogen than phosphorus and potassium.
Where, When and How to Plant Swiss Chard
Swiss chard seeds can be direct sown any time after the last frost date, and the seeds will germinate once the soil temperature has reached 50°. For earlier harvests, Swiss chard may be started indoors three to four weeks before the last frost date. Sow seeds in sterile seed-starting mix, with two seeds per cell. The seeds can sprout in as few as five days if the soil temperature is between 50° and 85°. One week after the seeds were sown, thin seedlings to one per cell.
Use a grow light so the seedlings don’t stretch out in search of light. Another good thing to use when starting seeds indoors is an oscillating fan. The air movement will prevent damping off disease, a fungus that is fatal to newly sprouted seedlings.
Before seedlings can be planted outdoors, they must be hardened off. Hardening off is the process of gradually introducing plants to the outdoor environment and the intensity of the sun. Put seedlings out for just a half-hour on the first day and add more time outdoors each day for a week until they are ready to handle eight hours of direct sunlight.
Rather than starting seeds yourself, you can also get a jumpstart by buying transplants from a nursery. This option is convenient but keep in mind that it is more costly than growing from seeds. Transplants also offer less variety than seeds.
Swiss chard performs best in full sun but will also tolerate a little shade. The soil should be well drained and amended with plenty of organic matter, namely compost. Further amend the soil with a slow-release organic nitrogen fertilizer, such as blood meal, feather meal or cottonseed meal. The nitrogen will provoke vigorous growth of tender leaves.
The ideal pH range for Swiss chard is 6.0–6.5, a range that most vegetables enjoy. You can conduct a soil test to find out the garden’s pH, and the test results will also reveal any nutrient deficiencies.
Be conscious of how wide the plants will be when they mature. Space the seeds or seedlings out so that the plants will not touch one another once they have reached full size. After planting, apply 2–3 inches of organic mulch around the plants, such as shredded leaves or straw, to suppress weeds and retain moisture.
How to Grow ABUNDANT Swiss Chard: From Seed to Harvest
0