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Post by littleminnie on Dec 18, 2014 19:12:06 GMT -5
A few years ago (again bad record keeping) I tried growing radicchio. It wasn't successful and I forgot about it. This summer a gorgeous radicchio plant bloomed and went to seed as a volunteer. I cannot find the seed variety on my previous years' lists and don't know what variety it was. It may have been a hybrid. What do you think about the seeds? It was just the one plant.
I found the info: it was Indigo hybrid.
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Post by steev on Dec 18, 2014 19:26:06 GMT -5
Plant them out next year! If it's pure seed, you may get a good crop of whatever. If it's hybrid seed, you may get a very interesting mix to play with. As for the variety, radicchio by any other name would be chicory.
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Post by philagardener on Dec 18, 2014 21:17:44 GMT -5
The same species no less! (Cichorium intybus) If you had common chicory growing in your field that might have crossed with your radicchio, so that resulting gene pool might be quite deep!
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Post by littleminnie on Dec 18, 2014 21:22:56 GMT -5
I really don't think there was any chicory anywhere but this was a commercial hybrid. The flowers were so pretty it would be worth growing as a biennial flower.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 18, 2014 21:24:34 GMT -5
Actually that seems like pretty good odds, given how ubiquitous wild chicory is as a weed. And since bees and such like chicory flowers, having any in the general area could easily result in crossing.
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Post by steev on Dec 19, 2014 1:06:27 GMT -5
In any event, knowing that you planted a hybrid, you already know that the grand-kids will be possibly wildly diverse. Cool!
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 19, 2014 7:19:48 GMT -5
I use it as a flower-vegetable or edimental (as Stephen Barstow says). I believe it is self fertile though I've never grown just one. It will volunteer happily and the plants compete well.
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Post by littleminnie on Jun 7, 2015 20:21:56 GMT -5
I saved the radicchio seeds last year. Now this spring there are lots of little volunteers there. My plan is to see if they get heads. They are so cute. Some sources say radicchio is a perennial.
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Post by steev on Jun 7, 2015 20:35:29 GMT -5
Can't see how it could be perennial, although potentially wildly self-seeding; certainly worth saving and re-sowing, like lettuce; the red romaine I grew this year is now scruffily striking, all those yellow flowers atop such red-black leaves.
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