Chicory: Sowing, planting and harvest calendar
How do you sow chicory outdoors?
First choose the chicory and your intended crop: baby leaves, radicchio or sugarloaf heads, roots for forcing, or curly and broad-leaved endives. Their sowing windows differ. Do not use a single rule of spring or autumn. In temperate gardens, many heading chicories are sown in early summer, while forcing types are usually sown in late spring. Check the variety and adapt to your climate; cold exposure after overly early sowing can encourage premature flowering.
Prepare a weed-free, fine, lightly firmed surface over fertile soil that retains moisture without waterlogging. There is no need to turn over twenty centimetres of soil routinely. Make shallow drills, sow thinly about one centimetre deep, cover and water gently. Keep the seedbed moist while seedlings emerge.
Thin seedlings to suit their eventual size and purpose. Baby leaves need less room than full heads, and roots for forcing have different requirements again. Follow the variety's spacing instead of imposing one distance on every chicory. Watch for slugs from emergence, remove competing weeds and avoid disturbing the roots of plants you retain.
How to harvest chicory successfully?
Choose your harvesting method from the chicory type and intended use. Baby leaves, mature radicchio or sugarloaf heads and forced chicons are not the same stage. Curly endive and escarole also have their own varieties and seasons. Check the label rather than applying one calendar to all of them.
For young cut leaves, use a clean tool and preserve the growing centre if you want regrowth. For a mature head, cut below it at the stage suited to the variety. The thickest outer leaves are not necessarily best: remove damaged or overly tough parts. Do not automatically cut every chicory five centimetres above ground and expect a guaranteed second crop.
Chicons come from a separate forcing stage in darkness. Harvesting them does not replace the earlier lifting and preparation of roots. Chicory grown for roots has another objective again. After picking, keep sound leaves or heads cool and use promptly. Brief refrigerator storage reduces wilting without a universal keeping period. Rinse before eating and adapt preparation to the type harvested. Keep track of which crop each batch came from.
Chicory
- Type : Vegetables
- Subtype : Leafy vegetables
- Botanical Family : Asteraceae (daisy family)
Characteristics
- Lifecycle : Annual
- Exposure : Full Sun
- Frost Hardiness : Frost Resistant
- Cultivation Difficulty : Easy
- Mature height : 60 cm
Sowing & Planting
- Greenhouse Growing : Not Required
- Plant Spacing : 20 cm
- Row Spacing : 30 cm
Maintenance
- Maintenance : Low
- Water Requirements : Moderate
Other characteristics
- Soil Type : Humus-rich
- Soil pH Preference : Neutral
- Pest Sensitivity : Moderate
- Disease Sensitivity : Moderate
- Weed Sensitivity : Moderate
- Pollination : Insect-pollinated
- Propagation : Sowing