Sow endives in your own garden

Content

• Sow endives in your own garden
• Prepare the soil properly
• Prefer endive
• Sow endive directly into the field
• The best plant neighbors
• Care after sowing
• Harvest endives correctly

Endives are well-tolerated with most plant neighbors

Sow endives in your own garden

Endives are seeded quite late in the year and can thus be used as a successor to early vegetables. Find out below what to watch out for when sowing.

Early article The endive varieties at a glance Next article plant endive - late into the bed, crisp on the table

Prepare the soil properly

The endive is a fairly frugal salad, but needs sufficient nutrients for healthy, vigorous growth. Therefore, the soil should be enriched with compost a few months before sowing. Dig the soil about 30 cm deep and put a good amount of compost or manure in the hole. Mix soil and compost with a hoe or shovel. This can happen already in the previous year in late autumn.

Prefer endive

Although endives can be preferred to seedlings, it really does not make any sense, as they are only planted very late in the year and can thus be sown directly into the bed without any problem. Beginning in June, you can grow the endives in potshops at temperatures of around 20 degrees and then set them outdoors from July.

Sow endive directly into the field

It makes more sense to sow the endives directly in the bed. Endives prefer a sunny location. The sunnier the location, the less bitter the endives, because the sun lowers the nitrate content.
Here are the key data for the successful endive sowing:

The best plant neighbors

Endives are compatible with most plants very well. There is no plant that they can not handle. But perfect plant neighbors are:

Care after sowing

Directly after sowing, endives should be kept evenly moist and should never dry out! Once the plants have reached a size of 10cm, you can throttle the water supply a bit to prevent rot.

Harvest endives correctly

Endives are often quite bitter. To reduce the bitterness, you can tie the leaves together a few days before the harvest. These then bleach out, which lowers the nitrate content, but also decreases the vitamin content. Harvest is from August to November.