Featured Recipes: • Chicons au Gratin • Grilled Endive with Goat Cheese and Walnuts Gardening Tips: Forcing Chicons This blanched delicacy needs to be grown similar to carrots until fall, and then it is dug up and forced in pots in darkness. Sow directly in deeply dug, fairly fertile, sandy and well-draining beds, 2 weeks before last frost. Plant ¼” deep, tamp down lightly and water finely. Thin seedlings 4 to 6 inches apart and keep well weeded until plants are established, water in drought conditions and let the plants get nipped by frost in the fall. After a few frosts and before the soil freezes dig up all roots keeping all that are at least 1 inch in diameter, cut off all but 1 inch of the leafy top. Trim side roots and shorten the main root to at least 8 inches and replant roots standing up into deep pots or buckets of dry soil, sand, or hardwood sawdust, don’t water until ready to force and keep in a cold, dark place. When ready to force, bring plants into a cool room between 50 – 65 degrees, water plants lightly and cover with another pot upside down and cover all with a black plastic bag. No light should reach the plants; so the sprouts or “chicons” will remain creamy white and mild flavored. The “chicons” may need to be watered while forming and should form within 30 days. This process can be repeated until all the roots are gone or the cold storage area becomes too warm and the roots start to sprout, at that time force the rest. If untreated roots start to sprout, begin blanching ASAP.