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Chicory: a blue flame that enters the fields

If you want to dig up a chicory root, stock up on a sharp spade or even a crowbar. Because this flower loves to grow on pastures and on compacted roadsides. For this reason, it is easiest to dig it in the fall, when the soil becomes limp from the rains. And it’s a completely hopeless thing to scratch it out with the toes of your bare feet from dry “like a stone” earth. Meanwhile, not so long ago, a considerable number of Poles and Poles of reproductive age could be caught in this extravagant occupation.

 

Common chicory (Cichorium intybus)

 

A simple, but not the most reliable, way to dry

 

Let me reveal a secret: in the Polish people there was a belief that someone who can dig up a chicory root without the help of any tool, in such a simple way, without resorting to the help of sorcerers and witches, arouses the reciprocal feeling of his beloved (or beloved). True, for this you need to fulfill three "small" conditions:

  • The rhizome must be dug out entirely, without severe damage.
  • It is necessary to have time to do this within one day. Specifically - on Easter week - on Thursday.
  • You have to dig with your bare foot.

With sober thinking, such "earthwork" is simply beyond the power of a normal person. Because:

  • Chicory, as a rule, grows in soils that are difficult to dig even with a bayonet shovel.
  • The chicory root extends vertically downward by more than a meter.
  • The human foot is not a horse's hoof or a bear's foot. The soles, pampered by the shoes, will very soon be rubbed into the blood. Practice on cultivated garden soil and make sure that this method even tortures you digging.

In general, my advice to you - if you want to achieve reciprocal love - do not get involved in this adventure, but look for something more reliable!

Wild chicory root

 

Flower of urban wastelands and field country roads

We can say about chicory that almost everyone knows it by sight, but only a select few by name and patronymic. In fact, this herb is very prominent and ubiquitous. Almost a meter high, chicory usually dominates the grass carpet, and its numerous bright flowers loom tens of meters away.

Chicory is sun-loving and drought-resistant. Its typical natural habitats are watersheds and dry lands. He avoids damp places, as well as continuous shady forests. A single chicory bush can be found in the most unexpected place: in a city park, near a fence, in a vegetable garden. The Latin name of chicory goes back to the Greek source, and is interpreted as "entering the fields", which unequivocally hints at its typical habitat.

But most often chicory settles on wastelands, roadsides and paths. Hence one of his Russian names - roadside. It is resistant to trampling and is the same companion of human paths-roads as knotweed, plantain, goose feet ... Human activity not only does not interfere with chicory, but, on the contrary, contributes to its prosperity.

The manner of chicory to grow on the road has been repeatedly poeticized by European peoples. The Germans believed that the soldier's bride was turned into a cyclic bush: a girl stands on the road - waiting for her fiancé. The "roadside" theme in the popular names of chicory is by far the most popular. One of the Russian names for the herb is "roadside"; the Germans have chicory - "road sentry", the Poles - "friend" - that is, plantain /

Summer is at its zenith - it's chicory time

Common chicory (Cichorium intybus)

What happens to a person over the years? Why does the starry sky of August cease to excite us in the same way as it did at the age of seventeen ?! Why does the piercing nightingale trills not cause agonizing insomnia? Why does the lingering autumn rains not provoke bouts of poetry? Where do bright experiences go ?! Why are the senses dulled ?! Why?! Why?! - Such thoughts once flooded into my 60-year-old, it would seem, for no reason, no reason.

However, there was a reason. The reason was a field blooming with a blue flame, past which I almost skipped a sweep.Glancing habitually, I simply did not notice him. But the subconscious noticed. It stopped me, whispering in my ear:

- Well, where did you run away !? Look at this field - you have never seen anything like this!

I looked up and gasped - the gentle slope of the vast field stretching below me was completely blue with flowering chicory. I have never really seen such a sight. For rent, it does not shine in the future - a whole field of chicory, blue from edge to edge - an unusual phenomenon. This became possible due to the fact that this field turned from arable into a fallow. And chicory was among its first settlers.

Coming back the same way, I was determined to repeat the miracle. But the blue vision disappeared without a trace. It's strange, I thought, because a hot sunny day is in full swing. Why did all the chicory flowers close? Maybe they feel the approach of a thunderstorm? But then what about the forecast that promised a weekly drought? - This is strange! Very strange!

So you know

Common chicory (Cichorium intybus)

Genus chicory(Cichorium) includes 10 plant species. In the vast family of Asteraceae (or Asteraceae), chicory belongs to the chicory subfamily of the same name, or in the old way - lettuce, which includes 70 genera and about 2300 species. This subfamily includes such common plants in our country as dandelion, thistle, goat (scorzonera), skerda, hawk, lettuce. All flowers in inflorescences of chicory are reed. Another sign of the subfamily is the presence of milky sap in plant tissues.

The most common and famous type of chicory is common chicory(Cichorium intybus L.). The range of this species is predominantly European. Outside Europe, common chicory comes only in separate wedges and spots.

It so happened that chicory has its official Latin name. Moreover, in "pre-botanical" times, this plant had more than a dozen folk names. The most common was - batogs, with several options: batogs, Peter's batogs, black batogs, blue batogs. This name played up the property of dried plant stems for a long time - sometimes until the very spring - to keep from lodging.

In the old days, batogs were called sticks for corporal punishment. Among the people, an ordinary wooden stick as thick as a finger and a short willow whip could be called a batog. Corporal punishment with batogs was commonly applied to civilians. In the army, the same function was performed by shpitsruten.

Anthology of the Cycotic Drink

Among several substitutes for natural coffee in the first place is “coffee” from chicory. Its closest rivals are acorn coffee, dandelion root coffee, and roasted cereal coffee.

The history of the emergence of the cyclic drink is lost in the centuries. It is not known for certain who invented it first. According to the main version, the culture of chicory originated somewhere on the border of the present Czech Republic and Germany and from there spread to neighboring countries - Holland, Poland, Austria. However, there is information that much earlier than the Europeans, even before our era, the ancient Egyptians learned to cook the cyclic drink. True, an exclusively wild species was used there for its preparation.

Cm. Chicory coffee.

The merit of the Europeans was that they did not confine themselves to collecting natural raw materials, but began to grow it on purpose. Long-term breeding has radically transformed chicory and increased its yield many times over. Even its biology has changed - chicory from a perennial with a branched tap rhizome has turned into a biennial with a fleshy, carrot-like root crop. The new culture, so as not to confuse it with salad chicory, began to be called root chicory.

Chicory and natural coffee entered the European everyday life almost at the same time. And since they are outwardly indistinguishable, the cyclic drink, by analogy, was also called "coffee". Someone even thought of mixing them. And this drink was quite popular. "Coffee with chicory", by the way, has its adherents now.

Root chicory came to Russia at the end of the 18th century. In the early 1800s, it was cultivated in the Rostov district of the Yaroslavl province. According to statistics, in 1913, chicory crops occupied about 4,000 hectares. During the Soviet era, the acreage under chicory expanded significantly. There were times when Russians were not offered any other coffee, except cykoric coffee. But the chicory root reached its highest flowering in the 1930s-40s, when its raw materials were used to produce synthetic rubber. As for the varieties, at first they sowed German - Magdeburg. Then he was replaced by two domestic varieties - Borisovsky and Giant. Now we have improved varieties of Ukrainian, Polish and Russian selection.

Currently, Poland, Ukraine and Germany are most actively involved in root chicory. All these countries have their own varieties. True, now the raw chicory is used mainly for the production of alcohol, which is used for further processing.

Chicory root

 

Your coffee

Root chicory is a fairly productive crop. With industrial technology, its yield is comparable to that of potatoes and can exceed 250 c / ha. At the same time, root chicory retains all the best qualities of a wild ancestor: unpretentiousness to soil, frost resistance, relative drought resistance. It does not present any particular difficulties and its cultivation in amateur conditions.

When cultivated in the garden, the yield of chicory reaches 10 kg / m2 or more. It is possible to grow root chicory practically throughout the territory of Russia, excluding the regions of the Far North. And almost everywhere its seed production is possible.

Root crops, the weight of which sometimes reaches 500 g, are formed by chicory in the year of sowing. And in the second year, the plant throws out a peduncle and forms seeds. For your own seed production, it is enough to leave one plant in the winter. In the middle lane, seeds are harvested in mid-late September. The chicory stems are cut, and after drying, the seeds are removed from the pericarp. The seeds of cultivated chicory are noticeably larger than those of wild-growing chicory. It is oblong, about 2 mm long.

Seeds are best sown immediately after harvest - back in September. Such crops are already sprouting by mid-October. When sowing in spring, the seeds are sown very early, when the soil is ready, and the soil is abundantly moistened until shoots appear. Crops are sown in rows with 20 cm spacing, seedlings are thinned out, leaving no more than 10 plants per running meter.

Chicory works best on strong, light loamy, permeable soils. In industrial cultivation, it is customary to plant chicory after well-fertilized predecessors: cabbage, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, legumes. When preparing the soil in the garden, they are limited to the introduction of mineral fertilizers - superphosphate and ammonium nitrate (up to 30 g / m2). The main agricultural technique when caring for chicory crops is weeding and loosening of row spacings. After closing the tops, weeding is stopped. Watering is practiced only during drought.

Chicory roots are harvested at the same time as carrots at the end of September-October. They are crushed in a coarse grater and fried in the oven of a gas stove until dark brown. Then the raw materials are ground in a coffee grinder and stored in a glass sealed container. It is not recommended to store ready-made cyclic raw materials for more than a year. Better to renew its stocks annually.

I think everyone knows how to make a coffee drink. But if you want to complicate its composition a little, I will give a traditional recipe with other ingredients (% by weight or volume):

  • chicory - 15%
  • barley - 30%
  • rye - 40%
  • oats - 15%

The cereal grains are soaked for 2 days until they swell completely, then roasted in the oven in the same way as chicory until dark brown, ground in a coffee grinder, mixed in the above proportion and used to prepare a drink. This drink is very high in calories and well satisfies not only thirst, but also hunger.

 

Checking the clock for chicory

Chicory has another curious feature.Its flowers, if you look closely, are open, then closed. Moreover, they do not close before the rain, as, for example, the flowers of a water lily - nymphea, but, it would seem, completely out of place. Not a cloud in the sky, the sun is shining, and they are closed. Conversely, it rains - and they are open.

In fact, there is no "violation of the rules" in this. It's just that the rule is different. Not all flowers are in "solar dependence". Many people open and close whisks according to completely different laws. For example, at certain hours. Watch the chicory, and you will see - he does just that. Its flowers open at 4-5 o'clock in the morning, and from noon you will not see an open chicory flower. It is interesting that even plucked flowers, placed in a vase of water, continue to observe the "routine" for some time. By the way, some of the relatives of chicory behave in a similar way: goatbeard, kulbaba, or the same dandelion.

Common chicory (Cichorium intybus)

The phenomenon of opening and closing flower corollas at a certain time once (in 1755) Carl Linnaeus advised him to "invent" a flower clock. The idea was to plant as many plants as possible nearby, whose flowers open at a certain hour, but at different times. Then, the "king of botanists" argued, comparing the state of flowers of different plants, it is easy to calculate what time it is now.

Here I want to make a "lyrical digression". I myself consider the Linnean idea with the "clock" unsuccessful. Want to know my opinion? It is possible to determine the time from them only with an accuracy of two hours. Who, excuse me, can be satisfied with such accuracy! And would it be respectful if you were late for work if you referred to a flower clock?

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