A triple-purpose plant: wild beauty in the garden, faithful ally of pollinators, and versatile ingredient in the kitchen.
About the variety. Wild Chicory is a vigorous perennial with bright blue flowers that bloom over a long period, attracting abundant pollinating insects. It reaches 100–120 cm in height. The leaves are used in salads, the flowers are edible, and the root, once roasted, is a classic coffee substitute.
Indicative windows; adjust them to your local climate.
Attracts beneficial insects
Frost hardy
Direct sowing
Growing guide
How to grow wild chicory?
A step-by-step growing guide, from sowing to harvest.
Sowing
Sow direct half a centimetre to one centimetre deep, in rows, in spring or at the end of summer, and thin to twenty five or thirty centimetres. Germination takes five to ten days. You can also sow in trays and transplant at four weeks, but do it early: the taproot forms quickly and a plant left too long in its cell never settles well. The plant makes a rosette of leaves in the first year and only flowers properly from the second, so do not lose patience with a sowing that seems to stall in autumn. Once established it self seeds readily: cut the dry stems if you do not want it to spread.
Soil
It wants deep, loose, free draining soil at a pH between 6.0 and 7.5, and accepts chalky, poor ground. It has a long taproot and appreciates deeply worked soil, free of large stones and compacted layers. It is not demanding in fertility: in very rich soil it gives too much leaf and less flower. Avoid spots where water stands in winter, because the root rots.
Climate
It is a hardy plant of the whole of Europe, growing between 10 °C and 25 °C and standing hard frost without protection. The rosette sits out the winter in the ground and shoots in spring; the flowering stems, a metre or more tall, open their blue flowers from July to September, each one only in the morning and closing by midday. It needs full sun to flower well: in shade it stretches and gives few flowers. In Portugal and Spain it grows on verges and waste ground without any watering, so in the garden it asks only for a sunny, dry spot. On the Atlantic coast it flowers for longer, because the summer is less harsh; inland the flowering concentrates in July and August and the plant then dries off, to shoot again with the autumn rains. In France, Germany and northern Italy it is equally wild and needs no special winter care.
Fertilisation
Its needs are very low and it flowers best in poor soil. A little mature compost worked in before sowing is enough for the whole first year, and after that it needs nothing. Do not use fresh manure or nitrogen feeds: they give a huge leafy rosette, soft stems that flop and few flowers. If the plant yellows in very poor soil, one watering with liquid organic feed in spring is enough.
Watering
Water only until the plant is established, in the first six to eight weeks. After that the taproot draws water from deep down and the plant stands the Iberian summer unwatered. Overwatering gives soft leaf and rots the root in winter. For tender salad leaf, one watering a week in dry weather is enough.
Weed control
Hoe often and always shallowly in the first weeks, while the rosette is still small and loses the contest for light. Do not dig deep: the main root is a taproot, but the fine roots run near the surface and break easily. From the second year the broad rosette smothers almost everything around it and the work ends. Preparing the bed two or three weeks in advance, letting the first flush of weeds germinate and removing it before sowing saves a lot of work at the start.
Pest control
It is a wild plant and suffers little from pests. Slugs and snails eat the seedlings and the young rosette leaves in damp weather: collect them at night and use an ash barrier in the first weeks. Aphids settle on the tips of the flowering stems in spring and are treated with potassium soap, but as a rule the ladybirds sort them out on their own. Leaf miner draws tunnels in the leaf, which are simply removed by hand. No mesh or preventive treatments are needed: the flowers draw bees, hoverflies and other helpers, and that is exactly why it earns a place in the garden.
Diseases
Very resistant: in free draining soil it hardly ever falls ill. Powdery mildew may cover the lower leaves with white bloom at the end of summer, when the plant is already in flower, and is not worth treating: remove the affected leaves and cut the stems after flowering. In very wet winters the rosette can rot at the collar, above all in heavy soil or on crowded plants: space well, plant with the collar at the surface and ensure drainage. Root rot in waterlogged soil has no treatment and is the only real cause of losing the plant.
Harvest
What you harvest is mainly the flowers: cut the stems in the morning, when the flowers have just opened, because they close by midday and last little in a vase. The flowers are edible and decorate salads; pick them the same day. The young rosette leaves, in spring and autumn, are eaten in salads or cooked and are bitter by nature: the smaller, the milder. Let a few stems dry on the plant if you want seed for the following year, and cut the rest at ground level after flowering so the rosette shoots again. The reference colour is blue, and that is what tells you it is ready.
