In the spring of each year, California Vegetable Specialties sows specially selected hybrid chicory seeds at multiple locations throughout Northern California. Chicory vegetation resembles Swiss chard or beet tops, and by fall, the plant has produced a root the size of a large carrot.

At the onset of winter, the plants are "topped," meaning that nearly all of the vegetation is cut off, with the "growing bud" left intact on top of the root. The roots are then dug up and trucked to California Vegetable Specialties' facility in Rio Vista, CA. Here they are inspected for quality, sorted, and placed in mammoth cold storage rooms until needed by produce buyers and chefs. The roots rest in a cold "artificial winter," waiting to begin their transformation into California Endive.

As market demand requires, the chicory roots are removed from cold storage and placed in large, specially designed growing trays. The trays are set in the growing, or forcing, room, a cavernous, completely dark, temperature and humidity-controlled environment. Here, the roots are forced for three to four weeks, receiving daily irrigations of a specially formulated fertilizer solution.

In response to these carefully controlled conditions, the chicory roots begin to grow again. At the bottom of each root, a system of fine feeder roots develops, absorbing water and the nutrients in the growing solution. At the top, the growing bud sprouts, and produces a small tight head of leaves. This head, or "chicon" as it's known in French, is California Endive, ready to be harvested and enjoyed.

Our process for growing California Endive mimics what the plant would encounter as it moved through its natural two-year growing cycle. Chicory is a biannual plant, requiring two years to produce seed.

By harvesting the root at the end of the first growing season, and subsequently placing it in cold storage, we trick the plant into thinking it has entered its normal wintertime dormancy period. When we remove it from cold storage and place it in the forcing room, we are signaling the plant that it's springtime. We then create a "season" of total darkness, mild temperatures, and high humidity that we control precisely using a vast array of high-tech equipment. The plant responds to these conditions by producing the "forced" blanched endive, or chicon, instead of its normal bouquet of leafy greens.

When the chicons are ready to harvest, the trays are removed from the growing room and the delicate heads are snapped from the chicory roots. Our trained, latex-gloved workers inspect the product once again before hand-trimming each chicon and packing it into small retail packs or larger boxes for chefs. Since each root has only one growing bud, it can produce only one California Endive. The trimmed chicory roots are set aside and hauled to neighboring ranches for cattle feed.

If you'd like to know more about the production of endive, we've created a nine-minute video documenting the entire process, from sowing chicory seeds to loading boxes of California Endive onto trucks to go to market. Copies are available free of charge to food professionals and culinary schools. Go to "Tools for Chef Educators" in the "For the Trade" section of this website to request your copy.

A few interesting endive morsels:

• In eating endive, one is literally eating chicory.
• The central core of each endive is, in fact, the rudimentary beginnings of a seed stalk. However, CVS chicory plants never go to seed in the field, as we harvest them before that occurs.
• Red endive is grown exactly the same way as white - the color difference stems from genetics only.
• And finally, consider this: Endive is not a "natural" product, in the sense that it does not exist in nature! It is instead the contrived result of man's manipulation of nature. The chicory root, however, never has any idea that it's not in growing in nature. In fact, the entire process could be labeled a big horticultural hoax!