> I saw no responses to... All of your effort & no response! Sorry for being rude! ;-) ----- > use less of what you have I'm not using any right now!... except for rare use of supermarket bagged mixes. I'm planning ahead for winter...where in my climate... lettuce is shredded by high winds and hail. I previously posted about the "permaculture" potential of chicory. Chicory also tends to have a long tap root while lettuce tends to have a shallow root system (but breeders are now trying to put back deep roots onto lettuce because of resistance to drought and corky root rot). I live on an old sand dune; a long taproot appeals to me for summer droughts and erosion control potential. I grow my lettuce in pots and pamper it; I'm thinking about chicory as something for the yard and as a back up if I run out of lettuce. Maybe as a decoy for the racoons and other varmits as well. ----- > look for 'Sugarloaf', with a more "mild" bitter taste I saw such a description in one catalog, while several other catalog descriptions were silent as to whether sugarloaf is more mild. Do you vouch for this from personal experience or did you just read the same catalog I did! ;-) ----- > Escarole is also a form of mild chicory Frisee endive as a crunchy componet of supermarket bagged salad mix is within my tolerance range. For some reason I got it in my head that escarole & endive are more susceptible to winter rots than "true" chicories. That is why I haven't thought about them much. But I suppose that heading raddichio and sugarloaf chicories could have the same problem.

Carla Emory has a couple of paragraphs about home-grown rabbit food: "The old-timers who wintered their rabbits on food they'd grown themselves fed them such things as stock beets and cabbage in winter as well as their grain and hay. So can you. Pea and bean vines can be cured like hay and make an excellent hay substitute or supplement. "In season, rabbits like anything green, but you must be careful not to feed them plants that are outrightly poisonous, such as chokecherry or rhubarb leaves, or potato peels with sprouts or the ones that have been in the sun long enough to get even the slightest touch of green. Other greens are only mildly poisonous in the uncooked state such as pigweed, amaranth greens, spinach, comfrey, and Swiss chard--but for a creature with a small body weight like a rabbit, especially a young rabbit, these can be a problem too. Much of the reason that people develop a fear of growing their own rabbit food, or have had bad experiences with home feeding of rabbits is that they don't understand how very many greens, wild or domestic, are not fully safe to feed rabbits, and which are. Before feeding a leafy green or herb for the first time, check the list under "Edible for Rabbits" below, to see if there is a warning of any sort about it. Stick to feeding them human-type salad greens unless you know for sure a wild one is safe. If cooking is advised for a green or category of greens (the amaranth family), don't feed it to rabbits who, of course, would be eating it raw. If it's in the least toxic, don't feed it to them. If it might have chemical residues in it, don't feed it to them. "I plant extra rows of lettuce for them. And when I weed in the summer, I take along a bucket to put the pulled edible weeds for rabbits. Feeding this way you never have to buy a rabbit pellet and they do fine. When fed home-grown stuff, they'll grow a little slower (and more normally) to that 2-lb. butchering size. But it's far cheaper, and I have organic meat because conception on, they've been nourished with home-grown foods and greens, or hay and grain from a source I know is chemical-free. "Vegetables/Greens/Fruits: A combination of grains is better than a single one. A combination of veggies and greens plus grain and hay is better yet. Let your rabbits do some of the picking and choosing. They'll choose what they need. They'lll love much of what you offer of this sort, and it's a nice way to tame them--hand-feeding them some veggie treats. For pregnant and nursing does, variety is especially important. Offer the vegetables or leafy greens in season (the longer the season, the better). Garden and kitchen vegetables and fruit scraps can be included also, as long as they're not on the unhealthy list. If you're just starting to supplement a rabbit's diet in this way, go slowly at first until your bunny gets used to it. Limit what you feed so that surplus doesn't rot in the cage. Rotting surpluses are good for chickens or pigs, but not rabbits. In fact, rabbits can get sick from eating partly spoiled greens. Garden vegetables for rabbits, as for people, are mostly water. Greens are water plus lots of minerals and vitamins. Root vegetables are higher in energy supplied, lower in the mineral-and-vitamin department."

I can find quite a bit of the wild stuff, but certainly couldn't afford to send that much. Chicory, plantain, fireweed, Purslane, wood sorrel, Solomon's seal (false?), some type of gooseberry (wild ones, when I go to Idaho) Jerusalem artichoke, red alder, skunk cabbage--maybe, kinnikinnick, MAYBE serviceberry, wild ginger (certainly not 40 of them, though), possibly Oregon grape, bedstraw, burdock, not sure on monkeyflower, cascara, snowberry, all heal, yarrow, yellow violets, Virginia creeper, maybe nuphar polysepalus, wild strawberries (fragaria virginiana and chiloensis).

The groundhog has been relocated to an undisclosed (I truly don't know where and I'm not asking) new home far far away from my chicory, ya hoo! The trap will be reset tomorrow in case he brought a buddy, haha. Yes Helen it is the wild chicory, I love the blue and I've been trying to get it to grow by my pond for years, but there have been those groundhog issues. Plus I think I was pulling out the seedlings for a while there because they look just like dandelions! This was looking like a real good year for it but I think it will come back ok, it didn't eat the entire plant, just the top. Haha I'll be glad to bring you the next one we catch, jf, you are welcome to have him for a meal. As for me I think I'll pass. Sandy