Post Updated Below
Two and a half years ago or so, the local garden nursery had Stamnagathi plants for sale – but I had no clue what they were. I ended up buying two or three – just to see if I could I could get them to grow, and figure out what they were as they went along. In the meantime, I did some research on this plant and was impressed by what I learned about the health benefits of Stamnagathi. Apparently some consider stamnagathi a super food.
When I began growing it in my garden, it really did nothing much except bolt on me. The leaves are supposed to be what you eat, but my Stamnagathi plants didn’t produce much leaves, but instead, produced lots of stems with pretty flowers – and very much appeared to me like a chicory. Indeed, Stamnagathi is in the chicory family but is unique and has the Latin name of Cichorium spinosum.
When I realized that this vegetable has so many apparent health benefits, I thought maybe I should try to have more than two or three plants growing in my garden, and find out more about how to grown it. Over time, the two or three that I had planted did nothing, but I did source some seeds…. but I could not get them to germinate.
Fast forward 2 1/2 years, and the garden nursery I regularly visit had them for sale again, this time instead of in May, in mid November. Gianis told me this was the best time of year to get them planted and growing, and during our discussion, I mentioned I had tried to grow from seed but did not have much luck. Gianis told me he also had tried, and while having much skill with many seeds and gardening, he also had not had a lot of luck germinating Stamnagathi.
So, I’m trying again. I found seeds available from greencenter.gr recently, ordered a couple of packets, and am going to try again.
I will try in two ways.. the first way is the soil method, where I have filled two seed/seedling pots with soil and planted one seed in each.
I am also going to try the “baggy method” often used with paper towel, but in my case, I think a heavier material sold here in Greece for washing dishes called “Wettex” (but weirdly, pronounced as ‘Vetex’) is used as my germination medium.
Which will be the most successful if any? I don’t know. I cannot even find out what the ideal temperature is for stamnagathi germination, but perhaps with my experiments, we’ll learn more and I’ll update this post later, as things progress.
UPDATE JANUARY 3, 2025
Well, I’m thrilled that I have had quite some success with germinating these Stamnagathi seeds! With both the ones I directly sowed into the seed pots with substrate soil and the ones I have attempted using the “baggy method” with a piece of moistened Wettex.
I have not kept exact notes, but I do note that the first signs of germination were from the “seeds” that I had used the “baggy” method. It took about 16 days and I noticed one of them had a root germinating. So the next day, I took a pair of tweezers and pulled it out of the plastic baggy and put it in top of a seed pot, sprinkled lightly some soil, and kept it moist (but not not soaking wet).
A few days later, this one started to poke up above the soil, it’s first leaves. The ones I had direct sowed to the pots would poke up a few days after that.
Subsequently, a few more of the “baggy” method seeds were germinating and they were transferred to pots. One thing I noticed though that would capture my attention was that a couple of these appeared to have 2, 3, and even 4 individual roots – not just a single root. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.
Then I noticed that in at least one where I had originally sewn directly into a pot, it appeared to have multiple stems coming up. That got me wondering…
Yesterday, I had another look at the seeds sown in the baggy, and realized that what I thought were seeds, were more of a “husk” surrounding more than one seed. I could see what appeared to be a few tiny seeds that were root germinating and on a hunch, I opened the second package of seeds that I had kept in the package, and scraped away at the “hull.”
Inside, I found four individual tiny black seeds. So what I was thinking was a “seed” is in fact, a cluster of 4 seeds, surrounded by a hard husk-like pod, for lack of a better name. They are very tiny and if not working against a white background, hard to see – but it does change my thinking of how I might try to speed up germination of the next package – I’ll break away the husk part and try to germinate the individual seeds inside, instead of waiting for moisture to break down this outer “case.”
But at this point, I’m pretty happy – I’ve got more than ten Stamnagathi seedlings going which is a huge improvement over the zero I had, 2 1/2 years ago.