Uses:

• culinary – excellent in salads or in risotto as with Milanese recipe
• tends to be bitter when younger and greener

Propagation & cultivation

• Seed – only reliable method – plant in sandy mix and allow lots of direct heat and sunlight and water
• Collect viable seed from flowers stored in paper bag and left to dry out.
• Mulch well with lucerne and feed well with dynamic lifter type mix – blood and bone and other manures – however if soil is good structure it is usually ok to leave it without mulch
• Loves cold or frost burn that increases the colour intensity and taste
• grows green and tall as young plant with heat and then burns back and forms tight balls with cold weather
• few pests aside from slugs and snails

Species and varities I’m growing:

radicchio – Cichorium intybus

The main variety I have been growing is ‘Red Orchid’ an Italian heirloom sourced from Wollongong.

But I also grow red stemmed dandelion arrow style, Treviso and Grummolo Verde.