Scorzonera Or Goat - Black Root, Growing On Your Site

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

When in the spring of 1950 I received a plot of twelve acres of land for a garden in collective gardening, I was incredibly happy, because I had dreamed about it for a long time. Having started the development of my land, I, unlike many neighbors, did not become confined only to my hundred square meters, but began to attend agricultural exhibitions - both ours, in Leningrad, and even went to the capital. When he was in Moscow on business, he always found time to run into VDNKh. And he did all this with one goal: not to "reinvent the wheel", but to learn from the experience of others who have been mastering the agricultural business for more than a year and have good results.

He studied the best methods of growing various crops, wondering how to use these techniques on his weaving. Moreover, I visited not only agricultural exhibitions, but also the botanical gardens of Leningrad and Moscow. There I tried to see some rare vegetable plants that you can try to grow on the site yourself. And only after a detailed study of the possibility of using this plant on his land, he transferred it and prescribed it there either "permanently", or after checking for yield, excluded it from the list of crops grown. He paid special attention, of course, in addition to agricultural technology, and methods of protecting plants from pests and diseases. I must say that the use of the best technologies and new varieties on the beds immediately had a positive effect on the harvest of the crops that I grew. And at the same time I wanted to grow something that my neighbors do not have.

At one of the exhibitions I was interested in an outlandish vegetable plant with long black roots, unknown to me until then. It turns out that it was a rare vegetable plant called Scorzzonera hispanica (Lin.) - Spanish scorzonera. It also has other names - black root, sweet root, goat. The original name of the plant was given by the Italians for the similarity of the root crop with the black snake - scorzonera. It belongs to the genus of perennial grasses, the Astrov family.

I bought scorzonera seeds for my garden and tried to learn as much as possible about her. Scorzonera Spanish is a good honey plant. The most common biennial Spanish scorzonera is a sweet or black root. There are also other varieties, for example, the ordinary variety, Vulkan, Russian giant and others.

Scorzonera roots are edible, taste good after a little cooking, and due to the abundance of substances valuable for the body and health, it is considered a dietary vegetable, since it contains 19.6% dry matter, 1.04% protein, 0.5% fat. sugar - 2.19%, fiber - 2.27%, ash - 1.0%, it contains provitamin A, and it also contains the carbohydrate inulin, which is recommended for patients with diabetes mellitus or diabetes.

For many centuries, scorzonera has been revered as a miraculous remedy for heart, eye and nervous diseases. Scorzonera is recommended for baby food, for this it is peeled (black) and boiled in salted water. Roots boiled in acidified water to preserve the white color of the pulp, are then seasoned with oil. Scorchonera root vegetables can be added to salads, soups, to which they give a peculiar taste. If you add scorzonera roots to jars when salting cucumbers, it will give them strength and a delicious crunch.

Scorzonera is a perennial plant, but it is usually grown in vegetable gardens for two years. In the first year, long fleshy roots are obtained, in the second year - seeds. Part of the crop can be harvested in the fall, and part can be left in the ground. Scorzonera can overwinter without shelter, and in the spring its roots can be dug up. But I would advise those who will grow this vegetable not to dig up all the plants, but simply defuse the planting by harvesting part of the crop and leaving the other for seeds. It is no coincidence that I recommend doing this: scorzonera keeps seeds germinating for a maximum of two years, but it is best to sow it with fresh seeds. Do you always find fresh scorpion seeds in the store? That is why in the spring you need to leave some of the plants to get your seeds from them. From my own experience, I know that they ripen on scorzonera in our region.

If you want to get large, long root crops of scorzonera, then their seeds, regardless of the variety, should be sown in deeply cultivated beds (up to 30 cm), with loose, fertile soil, two-line ribbons with a distance between rows of 25-30 cm (in rows 15-18 cm), and between the belts 60 cm. Seeds can be sown already in April, as well as at the beginning of August (before winter) to a depth of 2.5-3 cm. Scorzonera of August sowing remains in the ground for the winter (does not require shelter), and by the next autumn, especially large and long roots are formed on the grown plants. Scorzonera gives very tender and very juicy roots, so when harvesting them, you should try not to damage the black peel, since after the juice flows out, they become less tasty and are worse stored in winter.

Scorzonera flowers have a pleasant vanilla smell, attract bees - for example, I sometimes even picked these flowers and put them in a cucumber greenhouse in a bucket to attract pollinators there. After digging the root vegetables on them, carefully so as not to damage the skin and prevent the milky juice from leaking out, cut the tops 4 cm from the root vegetable. Sometimes it happens that in the very first summer, the scorzonera begins to drive out the trunk and bloom. So, unlike carrots, the root crop in this case still turns out to be of a normal size and high quality.

Scorzonera recipes

I wish you all good luck and harvest!