Cichorium intybus (Chicory)

The wild Cichory has many names according to Publication 505 Ontario's Weeds published by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. It has been called Blue daisy, Blue sailors, Coffee-weed, Common chicory, Italian dandelion, Magdeburg, Radichetta, Wild succory and Witloof among others. While I have always liked the flower, I haven't added it to the garden because of the weedy plant that supports it. A colleague suggested though that since there aren't any blue Lilies that we are aware of, I might try cross pollinating a white Lilly with the pollen from the Chicory. Haven't tried it yet.

When the flower started to bloom this summer I was again captivated by the pretty blue colour of the flower. So I decided to look it up.

Did you know that there are varieties of the plant that are widely cultivated in Continental Europe. While used in great part as a coffee substitute or additive and in naturopathic medicinal preparations, the leaves of some varieties are used as greens for salads. The leaves have to be blanched first under inverted flower pots or boxes as is done with endive. Blanching removes the bitterness.

For coffee substitutes or additives, the roots of many are dug up, washed, ground or chopped up, spread on cookie sheets and roasted in a warm oven until coffee brown and we are told that wild Chicory can be processed in the same way. From descriptions of the brew that I have read about in war year publications, I'm not sure that I want to give the brew a shot, but the greens sound interesting. Blanching the leaves though is key.

Oenothera berlandieri 'Siskiyou' - mistake

I became interested in the yellow Evening Primrose (Oenothera missouriensis), the large yellow one that is often used in rock gardens or at the front of borders. And anyone that knows me knows that when a plant catches my fancy, I look at others in the same family that might look nice in the garden too. Sure enough, there was another that looked interesting - the Mexican Evening Primose (O berlandieri 'Siskiyou').

The description said a whole bunch of things that sounded quite promising - "extremely floriferous - beautiful light rose shade - good potential as a landscaping plant with a long season of bloom - Plants form a low mat". Sound interesting? I thought so. The description said a few other things that I sort of glossed over. There was the adjective "vigorous" and "because of its wandering habit, this should probably be restrained or edged regularly." I can handle that, I said,so I purchased 3 plants and planted them in full sun. In the first year, they filled in the area that I wanted them to fill in. The next year, they continued to expand and I tried to haul them in. It was a lot of work but the effort was worth it. But they continued to expand exponentially. No matter how hard I tried, they just took off.

So I decided to dig them out. It took 5 years before I managed to get the last of the roots out. Since then, I pay much more attention to words like "vigorous" and "wandering habit".

Garden maintenance

As I work in the garden at this time of year, I'm reminded of all of the things that I need to do in the near future and all of the things that I should have done.

The "need to do" include such things as collecting seeds for Seedy Saturday or to ensure that I don't have to remove a million seedlings in the Spring that I don't really need. It also includes cleaning up around the Irises and making sure that only healthy rhizomes remain. And there are many other "need to do's" that we will talk about in future postings.

The "should have done's" include paying much more attention to descriptions of plants prior to acquiring and planting them. This category could also have been called the "mistakes". A fellow Master Gardener has produced an entire PowerPoint presentation around this category. I'll mention some of the mistakes that I have made over the years and what I have done to either manage the problem or to clean up the garden. "Should have done's" include the care that should have been given to the placement of some plants such as those that are subject to mildew or other controllable infections.