Cichorium intybus var. foliosum 'Zuckerhut'
Sugarloaf chicory
Common names: Sugarloaf
At a glance
- Light
- Partial shade
- Spacing
- 30 cm, rows 40 cm
- Lifespan
- Annual
- Sowing
- Jun–Jul
- Harvest
- Oct–Dec
- Hardiness
- Cold damage below −6 °C
- Water need
- Medium
Photo: Original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschla… · Public Domain · Source
Description
The 'Zuckerhut' is a chicory salad that forms a large, conical head of firm, pale green leaves, hence its name. It has a mild bitterness, is very crisp, and is one of the best storage salads: when stored in a cool cellar it can provide fresh greens long after the first frost.
Care instructions
Sow after June directly into the garden bed and give it plenty of space, as the heads become large and heavy. Keep the soil consistently moist and harvest the heads late in the fall, after the first light frosts, which mellow the bitterness. The harvested heads can be stored cool and dark for several weeks.
The care notes were machine-translated from German.
Garden year
SowingJun–Jul
HarvestOct–Dec
Germination
- Soil temperature
- from 8 °C, ideally 20 °C
- Days to sprout
- 4 to 10 days
- Light
- Sprouts in light or dark
- Sowing depth
- 1 cm
- How to start
- Sow straight into the bed
Soil & site
Soil pH
Soil type
loamy, humus-rich, well-drained
Sugarloaf chicory needs a deep, loose and well-drained soil. Its taproot wants to go deep. Humus-rich, loamy-sandy to sandy-loamy soil is ideal; definitely avoid waterlogging, as it leads to root rot. The pH is best slightly acidic to neutral (about 6.0 to 7.0); avoid freshly limed beds.
Lettuce and other composites are light to moderate feeders: a break of about 3 years is enough, and they work well as gap fillers between the main crops.
Feeding
Medium feeder
Months
Mar–Apr
In spring before sowing, work well-rotted compost shallowly into the soil. As a moderate feeder, sugarloaf chicory copes well with that on well-supplied garden soil. If it stands in the bed after a heavy feeder, it uses the residual nutrients of the preceding crop. If nutrient deficiency shows during the growing phase, you can help with heavily diluted nettle manure.
Overwintering
You grow sugarloaf chicory as an annual: you sow it anew every summer and need not save any plant over the winter. In the bed it tolerates light frost; in harder frost, harvest the heads in good time or dig them up with the root ball and store them in moist sand in a dark, cool, frost-free place; let frozen heads thaw before you touch them.
Propagation
Methods
- From seed
Sugarloaf chicory is propagated exclusively by sowing. Sow the seeds from mid-June to the end of July directly in an outdoor bed: an earlier date tempts the plant under the long days to bolt without forming a usable head. The end of June to early July is the ideal time. Lay the seeds about 1–2 cm deep; sugarloaf chicory is a dark germinator, so cover the seed well with soil. Keep about 30 cm between plants in the row and 40 cm between rows, or thin more densely sown rows accordingly. At 20–25 °C the seeds germinate in 7–14 days. Prefer direct sowing: sugarloaf chicory quickly forms a long taproot that is hard to transplant later. If you still raise it indoors, plant the young plants out very early, at the seed-leaf to two-leaf stage at the latest and within a few weeks, so that the taproot is not damaged; do not wait until the plants are 10 cm tall. Choose a deep, loose soil and work in ripe compost beforehand. From October to December you can harvest the firm, cone-shaped heads; the outer leaves protect the heart leaves from light frost.
Companion planting
Companion planting is partly traditional gardening lore. Where the reason is known, it is given.
Some of these explanations were machine-translated.
For your garden
Grow Sugarloaf chicory yourself
Gartenkern tells you when frost is coming, when to sow and when to harvest, for your location.
Free, no time limit
Notes from real gardens
What other gardeners have written down about this variety, anonymous and voluntary.
No notes shared yet. Will you be the first to write one down?