Kale: A poster child for edible gardening

Posted by admin on May 5th, 2010in Charlotte Germane, Garden Planters, Gardening Products | No Comments

by Charlotte Germane, Editor, H. Potter Knowledge blog 2010-2011

I haven’t stored my favorite winter sweaters yet and I haven’t turned my back on my favorite winter vegetable–kale.

A poster child for edible gardening, kale makes a sculptural statement in a copper planter and gives you so many vitamins it’ll make your head spin.

You can’t beat kale in the cool-weather garden. Its season is winding down now, but remember kale for fall planting. Kale does just fine in winter temperatures as low as 10 to 15 F. The frost deepens its color and sweetens its flavor. What a pal in winter and snowy spring.

Colorful varieties of kale

• Plant the ‘Redbor’ variety of kale and watch it send out long, purple leaves. The color contrast with a copper garden planter is all a landscape designer could ask for. To keep going with the purple theme, tuck in some red-violet or blue-violet pansies for extra pow.

• Feeling blue? For an understated look, try ‘Dwarf Blue’ kale with blue-green, curled leaves.

• Do you have a black front door? Punch it up with a container of curly, black kale. This exciting and yummy variety goes by many names, so choose the name you like best and speak to your plant in Italian (Buon giorno, cavolo nero) or English (Hello there, black Tuscan kale).

How to plant kale

Place your container in full sun and fill it with rich potting soil. Plant kale starts or seedlings 12 to 18 inches apart.

Water well with a fine spray after planting and keep the soil consistently moist. Fall rain and winter snow should do most of that work for you.

Add two inches of compost as mulch in the container, keeping the mulch away from the base of the starts.

Kale through the seasons

How to harvest and fertilize kale

Cut the lower leaves off kale and cook them for supper. Kale will grow new leaves for you. It’s what the nursery pros call a “cut and come again” crop. Keep it happy with nitrogen-rich organic fertilizers such as fish emulsion or soybean meal.

Hot temperatures make kale leaves bitter, so don’t plan to feature it at summer barbecues. When summer arrives, harvest the last of your kale and say goodbye until sweater season rolls around again.

Watch a new video of our copper planters.

Read on to learn how to cook up all that colorful kale.