by Catherine Haug, November 9, 2012
Last year, Don Bates gave an excellent presentation on using Garden Season Extenders. He showed a photo of forcing Belgian Endive shoots in a bucket of sand that he kept in his root cellar, to have greens through the winter (see his photo, right). This intrigued me, as I too have a root cellar and I love endive.
Endive is delicious raw or cooked. See Cat’s Kitchen (my personal website) for a delicious recipe: Endive and Apple Salad with Warm Goat Cheese.
Today I happened upon a great photo-essay on how to grow endive this way: Kitchen Gardeners International: Growing Belgian Endive, by Roger Doiron. I plan to give this a try next year. But do I really have to sacrifice those lovely first greens to my compost pile?
Here’s a synopsis of the growing method:
- First you grow it normally in your garden, from seed.
- Then you carefully harvest the roots, cut off the greens (for composting), trim the roots, and then pack them vertically in a bucket. Don’s hint: pack in several small buckets so you can force only a few at a time, as in photo, above.
- Fill the bucket(s) with sand and set this in your root cellar.
- When you are ready to grow some endive shoots, you move the bucket to a warmer area and soon you’ll have those familiar white leafy shoots.