Cruel and Unusual Agriculture

Highly ornamental flowers of Belgian Endive

The endive forced into winter production (picture by 3.0 from wikimedia

The endive returns to bitter-tasting life in spring's sunlight

As we order seeds and start them on our windowsills and kitchen tables, the last thing we probably want to think about are supplies of local vegetables for next winter. So I'll keep it short: order your brussels sprout, chard and endive seeds now, sow and forget. In ten months you'll be glad you did.

Here are Belgian Endives I grew last summer. The beautiful mauve blossoms and roseatte of green leaves are too bitter to eat in the summertime. They were developed for a practice known as "Forcing": the brutal art of causing a plant to use up it's winter root stores to create blanched leaves of a delicate flavour in the absense of light in your basement.

You've probably seen these torpedo-shaped salad greens in select grocery stores. They are much cheaper to create on your own with a little effort. These endives were grown in my furace room, lights-off. If you don't get around to growing endives or are short on space, you can force dandelion roots too.

After a winter of cruel and unusual agriulture, my endives are greening up nicely in my porch. I will set them out again to gather another summers-worth of energy for future basement exploits.

You can read about the impressive nutritional benefits of endive on their wikipedia page

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