Growing Greens in the Dark
The ancient art of Campo Rosso’s Tardivo
There’s a greenhouse in Eastern Pennsylvania where the sun never shines. All of its clear glass panels are covered, shrouded in dark cloth, keeping the light away. It is here that the Tardivo grows, in pans of water, “forced” to sprout new leaves, sending candy-striped fingers reaching out toward the inky darkness.
Tardivo is a variety of radicchio native to Veneto, in northern Italy, where all chicories are named for their villages, like wines named after regional grapes. There you will also find Treviso — a tight-fisted, candy-striped radicchio that resembles endive in shape; Castelfranco — a round one with ruffled pale green leaves speckled with pink; and Chioggia — the best-known cabbage-shaped radicchio.
Tardivo, which means “late-maturing,” is actually a form of Treviso that requires a complicated second growth technique similar to that of Belgian endive called “forcing.”
The process, which starts as the weather begins to turn cold in late fall and winter, involves uprooting the plant after several hard frosts. To keep the plant growing well after it…
