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chicory

Growing Sugarloaf (Pan di Zucchero) Chicory

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One of the chicories that I planted in late summer for a fall crop is Sugarloaf chicory. If you aren’t familiar with this vegetable, it is a leafy crop in the same family as lettuces and sunflowers. Sugarloaf makes a tall head, similar to a Romaine lettuce. The inner, packed-together leaves are yellowish in color as a result of not being exposed to sunlight. The outer leaves that fold loosely around the head are darker green. All the leaves are good to eat.

Chicories in the garden -- a red radicchio in front and a taller green sugarloaf in back.
See a Sugarloaf growing behind red radicchio.

You may have seen seeds for this variety of chicory under another name. In Italy, it is called Pan di Zucchero. In France it is called Pain de Sucre. Some seed companies sell seeds for this type of chicory using these other names.

Sugarloaf chicory in the kitchen

The “sugar” part of the name does not mean that Sugarloaf is missing the bitterness that comes with all the other chicories. It does mean, though, that there is a little sweetness along with the bitterness.

I’ve used the leaves from this year’s plants in salads and as cooked greens, and both versions have been good. This may be because I harvested the chicory in winter. Cooler weather keeps the inherent bitterness of most chicories to a minimum.

One great feature of the Sugarloaf chicory is that it can stand up to cooking without turning slimy like spinach. If texture is one of your main objections to most cooked greens, this is one to try.

Growing Sugarloaf chicory

I grew this chicory as a spring crop one year, many years ago, and it didn’t make the tightly packed head that it is supposed to. This year, as a fall-grown crop, it did. Not heading-up didn’t stop me from using and enjoying the plants those years ago, but harvesting the classic tight heads from my own garden feels like a big win.

Long head of sugarloaf chicory lying on a countertop.
Long, narrow head of Sugarloaf chicory

Sugarloaf is a long-time-to-maturity crops. It needs close to three months of perfect weather. “Perfect” would, I think, involve no days over about 85 degrees F, and none below 32 degrees F. Since that kind of perfect does not exist in the Southeastern US, where I live and garden, my Sugarloaf chicories have taken four months to mature into those lovely heads of greens.

Head of sugarloaf chicory sliced through crosswise shows the tightly packed leaves in the center
Cross section of sugarloaf chicory shows tightly packed leaves in the core

If you plan to try a spring crop of Sugarloaf, it will be best to start them indoors, in plugs or flats, in the next few weeks. They can be transplanted out to the garden after hardening off (exposure to the great outdoors, an increasing number of hours each day) for a week or so.

The garden soil should have a pH in the 6-7 range, be well-amended with compost, and given an extra boost from a nitrogen-rich fertilizer (try one of the fish fertilizers, or alfalfa).

Soil should be kept moist, but not soggy. Too much water can encourage leaf rots at the base of the plant. If we have another super-soaker of a spring, plants in raised beds may be a bit drier than those in in-ground gardens.

Just like for radicchio, harvest Sugarloaf when the heads feel firm. If plants are left too long in the garden after that point, they may start to elongate, which means they are bolting, which means they are sending up a flowering stalk.

When a plant bolts, it quits putting its effort into new tasty leaves, and switches it all into the flowering stalk. If flowers are the goal, well that’s all ok. If you wanted to eat the lovely leafy part, bolting is not a good thing.

Also growing for harvest in January

Chicories, including radicchios and other chicories (frisée, escaroles), aren’t the only crops still coming to the kitchen from my garden. Also in the garden — still — are more carrots, radishes, lettuces, cilantro, and beets.

None of these are growing in long rows or huge blocks, or in massive quantities, but there is a little bit of everything. I pulled another bunch of carrots yesterday, and it was like finding a rainbow underground.

Bunch of garden carrots in shades of red, orange, and purple, with green leaves still attached.
Fresh garden carrots.

I also have another shallow planter full of arugula coming along. This crop is to use as a “cut and come again” addition to winter salads, sandwiches, and pizza.

Arugula seedlings as a dense planting growing in shallow pot.
Arugula seedlings will provide snippets of flavor to our meals in another week or so.

What is growing in your garden?

Early December Garden

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My garden is still full of crops that were planted in late summer, and we have been enjoying them bit by bit. The most abundant plant group in my fall/winter garden this year is the chicory group; these crops include escarole, frisée (an endive), and radicchio.

Other crops still coming in, bit by bit, are the carrots, radishes, lettuce, parsley, and winter onions (harvested as slender, green onions). I am still waiting for a beet to be large enough to bring in. The beet patch contains a few that are getting close.

The “bit by bit” style of harvest is partly because the crops are all heirlooms, which means they weren’t bred for uniform speed of growth. They all were chosen for flavor, not uniformity, which means my garden has a kind of wild look. We are really, though, enjoying the good food.

Tips of broad green leaves, growing upright and packed together in a bed of escarole and radicchio.
Looking across the tops of the escaroles and radicchios.

In the garden

Crops in the garden right now are growing well in our recent cool weather. When we had those few much-colder days, back in mid-November, down into the low twenties fahrenheit, I covered most of my garden to keep the plants a little warmer.

The wire supports that I set into the garden to support the spun row covers through those cold days are still in place. When the next hard freeze comes, I am ready.

Until then, my only work in the garden — besides harvesting good food — is pulling out a bit of chickweed and henbit, two common winter weeds that I snack on as I pull them and also bring inside to share with my pet rabbits.

These are some of the crops in my garden today:

  • Frisée
  • Castelfranco radicchio
  • Today’s salad radishes
  • Grumolo radicchio
  • Palla rossa radicchio
  • Escarole – Verde a cuore pieno
  • Winter onions
  • Lettuce – Marvel of four seasons

Leaves from the trees are filtering down through the plants, and the plan is for those leaves to remain in the garden. All those old leaves will add a little insulation for the plants and soil in the next hard freeze.

Why so many chicories?

Chicories are my current major crop-group for a couple of reasons.

One is that, when I have been in Italy, eating at restaurants, one commonly served side dish has been cooked greens. At first, I thought these were all spinach, but a lot of the time they were actually chicory/escarole (I found out by asking).

In addition, the little local grocery store in Montepulciano, where we stayed, sells several kinds of radicchios and escaroles all summer long. Growing so many kinds of chicories keeps memories of some great meals in my mind, and it also brings an Italian flavor to more of our meals at home.

Another reason for growing chicories is that they are not very bothered by pests and diseases. At least, so far they have been trouble-free.

Growing chicories in fall versus in spring

I have grown some kinds of chicories before now, but those were planted as spring crops, not as fall/winter crops. The different results of growing in these different seasons has been interesting.

One main difference that I have seen is that the heading-types, like the red radicchio Palla rossa, are slower to form those tight, central heads when grown as a fall crop.

However, the fall-grown plants are larger than I’ve seen in my spring-grown crops.

Other goings-on

I obviously have not been keeping up a weekly writing schedule on my website these past couple of months.

One reason is that we have had many visitors this fall — two sisters-in-law, then a brother, then another sister-in-law, then my youngest son and his partner. Being able to spend time with so many family members has been glorious! In a little more than a week, our oldest son will visit from Colorado, which will also be glorious. Then, our only guests for awhile will be pets of friends who are traveling for the winter holiday.

Front cover of a book, with the title "Garden planner and notebook" on a background of green leaves.

The other main reason for the lack of writing on this website is that I was writing something else — a new book!

More about the Garden Planner and Notebook next week.

Gardens Can Provide Convenient Substitutions for Missing Ingredients

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Food growing in the yard might not count as “convenience food,” but it can be mighty convenient. Sometimes, when I am putting supper together and missing an ingredient, a decent substitute is out in my organic garden.

Most recently, the needed ingredient was cooked spinach. Some years, I have plenty of spinach in the garden, but the local wild bunnies demolished this year’s spinach patch. The good news is that greens are probably the easiest veggie to substitute from the garden.

Chicory as a substitute for spinach in cooking

I have a little patch of kale, which would work as a spinach-substitute if there were more of it. You may remember, though, my patch of chicory, defended from the bunnies by a blockade of sticks. The blockade, after I added a lot more sticks, did work, and the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory, selected for its roots used in making chicory coffee, grew.

Chicory in the garden that has been nibbled by the wild yard bunnies.

Chicory to the left shows the bunny-damaged chicory patch before I beefed-up the stick blockade. 

Because I have not yet dug up any of the roots to make chicory coffee, there are plenty of large leaves on the plants.

I harvested about a third of the leaves from the patch, to use as a spinach substitute, in my recent vegetable lasagna.

'Magdeburg' chicory, nearing the time of harvest.

Picture to the right shows the successfully-defended chicory patch, with taller sticks still visible, poking up around the plants.

Some of the roots are finally large enough that I will dig them up in the next few weeks to make my coffee. This is a benefit of living in the South: the ground will not be frozen anytime soon. Digging up roots is still possible.

'Italiko rosso' chicory has beautiful red leaf veins, making it beautiful in addition to being tasty.

I will say, though, that the leaves of the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory, chosen for its roots, are not as tasty as the leaves of some other chicories I have grown in the past, like the ‘Italiko rosso’ in the picture to the left. 

The problem with the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory leaves is an intensified bitterness. I had to boil and drain the ‘Magdeburg’ leaves a couple of times to get to an acceptably-low level of bitterness. ‘Italiko rosso’ is mildly bitter, but I have never had to do the boil-then-drain  thing with that variety.

Convenient herb tea from the yard

Another convenient plant in the garden right now is oregano. In a few weeks, the oregano patch will lose a lot of its leaves, but — here in early December — it still looks great. The patch is thick with fresh, fragrant leaves.

Oregano can be used to make herbal tea, tasting pretty much like oregano.

We use our fresh herbs pretty frequently in cooking. I hadn’t thought, though, about using oregano to make an herbal tea until I read about it last week.

Since I like to use crops-in-the-yard as fully as possible, oregano tea seemed like a thing to try.

An old (2017) article on Livestrong.com tells about some potential benefits of oregano, especially oregano oil, but is very careful to not make a lot of overblown health claims for the tea. I appreciate the cautious approach!

I made tea using fresh oregano leaves on two separate days last week. The first day, I added honey and lemon, and the tea was good enough that I made another cup the next day. The second time, though, I drank it “straight”, without any additions. Let me just say that the first version, with honey and lemon, was MUCH better than the second. 

If anyone is curious — oregano tea tastes pretty much like oregano. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but finding it out in person made me laugh.

I am having oregano tea again today, with local honey and a squeeze of a lemon-like fruit that was grown by my friend Eddie.

Which “convenient foods” are you using from your garden this month?