Carolyn’s vegetable garden

Credit: Carolyn Herriot

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I grow several different cultivars of kale, Brassica oleracea, so that we have kale in the garden year round. Apart from making delicious steamed greens, small tender leaves add diversity to salads, and chopped kale makes a fine addition to soups or casseroles and tastes great in mashed potatoes.

TIP: Kale flower buds are superb as a side vegetable when lightly steamed (before the yellow flowers appear). Harvesting flower buds delays the setting of seed and prolongs production.

For summer and fall kale, sow seed in spring. For harvesting throughout the winter, sow kale seed at the end of June /early July, or transplant established seedlings into the garden in August, (no later than mid-September).

Kale is fast growing and relatively unbothered by insects.

TIP: Kale grows better in a soil pH more alkali than acidic. Add a handful of dolomite lime to the soil prior to planting to keep club root, a fungal disease, at bay.

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