Home Vegetable Gardening: Growing Endive

By Author: Michael Podlesny
Total Articles: 174
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Endive makes for a great vegetable to be planted in the early spring soon after the last frost occurs in your area. It is a great addition to a salad or garnishes for many other dishes. Here is how you can add great tasting endive to your home vegetable garden.

To make life easier for yourself and take advantage of gardening as soon as the frost season passes you by for the warmer spring months, start your endive seeds in doors. A portable small greenhouse, also known in some parts as a humidity dome, is available at your local home or garden center for less than five bucks. This will help speed up the germination process. If you do start your seeds in pots, make sure you give your endive eight weeks before moving them outdoors and do not plant the seed any deeper than 1/4".

While your seeds are germinating indoors get the soil prepared outdoors. Make sure the pH level of the area of your soil where the endive is going sits in the 5.5 to 7.0 range. You can get a soil pH tester at your local home or garden center fairly cheaply. When you pick your spot for endive make sure that area receives full sun.

One ...
... of the easiest parts of growing endive is harvesting it. Endive can be harvested as soon as the size of the leaves become useable. In other words when you feel like cutting off a few leaves and adding them to your dinner. I recommend using a pair of garden scissors to cut the leaves off about 1/2" above where the leaf meets the stem.

As you can see it is very easy to grow endive. Once you get the hang of growing endive then you can really start to play around with it by staggering plants from early spring to early summer and early autumn to early winter so you have a good constant supply of this great vegetable.
About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the Rest of Us, available where gardening books are sold. Sign up for Mike's vegetable gardening newsletter at his website: AveragePersonGardening.com and he will send you a free pack of vegetable seeds to get your garden started.