Gadenin日本語Get the appSlugs and snails in the autumn heart
Chicory heads at exactly the time of year slugs are most active, and a closing heart is a dark, damp, sheltered place with food in it. The damage is done from the inside out, so a head can look untouched from above and be hollowed out when you cut it. This is the single most common way a home chicory crop is spoiled.
The countermeasures are all about denying shelter rather than killing individuals. Strip the yellowing lower leaves that lie on the soil, keep mulch pulled an inch or two back from each crown, and clear weeds between rows. Check the base of a few plants after dark with a torch in mild damp weather; if you find slugs there, deal with them then, because that is when they are on the plant rather than hidden.
| Problem | Early sign | What to do | When to give up on the plant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slugs and snails | Ragged holes and slime trails at the base | Clear leaf litter, pull mulch back, hunt after dark | Heart hollowed out and fouled |
| Aphids | Sticky clusters in the young center leaves | Wash off with a jet of water, cut the affected outer leaves | Colony established deep inside a closed heart |
| Leaf miner | Pale winding tunnels inside the leaf | Pick off and bin marked leaves as you see them | Rarely; it is cosmetic on outer leaves |
| Gray mold | Fuzzy gray on damp lower leaves | Remove affected leaves, improve spacing and airflow | Mold has reached the heart |
| Heart rot | One soft spot, sour smell, head gives unevenly | Cut and use immediately if still sound inside | Interior brown and soft |
Rot in the heart, and why spacing causes it
Heart rot is a wet-weather problem and it is nearly always a spacing problem underneath. Plants set too close never dry out between rains, the outer leaves stay damp against each other, and the fungi that cause gray mold get in through a damaged or aging leaf and work inwards. By the time the outside looks wrong the heart is already gone.
Prevention is airflow. Keep the final spacing you planned rather than the spacing that felt wasteful in summer, keep the lower leaves stripped, water the soil rather than the foliage and do it in the morning. In a very wet autumn, cutting the heads a little early and storing them in the fridge loses you some flavor but saves the crop, which is the right trade.
One head with rot does not condemn the row, but leaving it there does. Pull it out and remove it from the bed, because the mold sporulating on it is what infects the next plant along.
Keep a note of which end of the row rotted. Heart rot clusters in the low, shaded or wet corner of a bed, and after a season or two the pattern tells you where not to put heading chicory again.
Aphids and the problem of a closed head
Aphids on chicory are most damaging in the weeks before the heart closes, because once it does they are sealed inside somewhere you cannot reach with a hose or a finger. They cluster on the youngest central leaves, leave the leaves sticky, and their honeydew turns black with sooty mold, which is unpleasant even where the leaf itself is undamaged.
Check the center of a few plants weekly through late summer, when the plants are growing fastest and the heart is still open. A firm jet of water knocks most of a colony off, and repeating it two or three days running usually settles it. Cutting away one or two badly affected outer leaves is worth doing early rather than hoping.
The underlying invitation is soft growth from too much nitrogen. If aphids are a recurring problem on your chicory, the feeding regime is more likely the cause than bad luck, and easing off the nitrogen after midsummer does more than any spray.
Problems specific to stored and forced roots
Once the roots come out of the ground the risks change completely. Roots packed for their cold rest go moldy if they were stored damp or if a damaged one was packed in with sound ones. Sort as you lift, keep the sand barely damp rather than wet, and pull out any root that has gone soft rather than hoping it will hold on.
In the forcing box itself, rot at the crown is the usual failure and overwatering is the usual cause. The medium should be damp enough to hold together when squeezed and no more. A root that goes soft in the box should be removed at once, along with the medium immediately around it, because the rot spreads through the packed roots quickly.
- Sort roots as you lift Set aside anything with a cut, a soft patch or a fork. Damaged roots stored with sound ones are how a whole box of stored roots is lost.
- Keep the storage medium barely damp Squeeze a handful of the sand or compost. It should just hold its shape without releasing water. Wetter than that and the crowns rot.
- Check the forcing box weekly Lift the cover for a moment, look for soft crowns or a sour smell, and put it straight back. A minute a week catches problems while they involve one root.
- Remove failures immediately Take out any soft root along with the medium touching it. Do not simply push it deeper or leave it because it might still sprout.
Bolting, and what to do with a bolted plant
A chicory that throws a flower stem in its first season is finished as a head or a forcing root. The stem is a response to cold experienced while the plant was young, or to a severe check in growth, and once the stem is up the plant puts everything into flowering. The leaves become tough and extremely bitter and the root goes woody.
Pull it out rather than leaving it. A bolted plant takes up space, shades its neighbors, and if left to flower and seed it will scatter seed that comes up as weeds in the bed for years. If you want the blue flowers for the sake of them, keep one plant, well away from the row, and cut the stem before the seed ripens.