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Saturday 31 December 2011 This is one vegetable which always grows well. Every variety I've ever grown has flourished here. Kale requires little care, grows tall and big, and shrugs off the early frosts we tend to get here at the end of the summer. Summer 2011 Tried some different and unusual varieties, and got some interesting results. We finished our kale during the third week of December, too. First we planted the traditional Red Russian and Winterbor green-curled varieties, which did well, although we didn't really pick them during the summer. Sort of lesson one - the kale arrives just as everything else arrives, too, so the problem here really is storage and preservation, not growth. The really good growers were the Dinosaur and Chinese kales from Horizon seeds. The Dinosaur had fleshy, dark-green leaves, and I pulled them out by the roots at freeze up and stored them in the root cellar, where they did well for the entire fall. I will gather more next year, and focus more on the thick-leaved varieties. They were good in salad with pesto. |
Winterbor kale (August 2011). 
Two years of Red Russian kale. Top photo: Frost has made the kale just a little more tasty and colorful (August 2004). Bottom photo: The same kale in the summer sunshine (August 2010). |