Red lettuce 'Red Rib' / 'Italiko Rosso' / 'Italiko Red' 5g

This historic leaf chicory has a beautiful red rib and, when fully grown, resembles dandelion leaves, but when the plants display their elegant blue flowers, that resemblance, of course, is gone.
The beauty of this "red dandelion" lies in its many uses:
- sown close together, you can harvest them as "baby leaf" or microgreens
- when fully grown, you can eat them raw (cut and mix with lettuce, otherwise it's too bitter) or stir-fry briefly.
- placing a black bucket over the plant halfway through its growth will blanch the leaves, making them milder in taste. Then eat raw or stir-fry briefly.
- allow them to grow into a full abundance of blue flowers.

The chicory family includes endive, frizzy endive, and various types of witloof. Characteristic is the more or less present "bitter" taste, once disliked and now highly appreciated. Let a plant "bolt" sometime: chicory flowers are usually beautifully blue and smell like vanilla!

Names:
Latin: Cichorium intybus
Dutch: Rode Molsla
Also: Roodnervige Cichorei
English: Red Ribbed Chicory, Red Dandelion