Plant kale

Over the years, kale has proven to be the perfect backup crop in my patch. One planting can generally give me up to 12 months of continuous cropping. When I’m waiting for something else to come on – cabbage or cauliflower, some silverbeet or English spinach – I always have a cluster of kale ready to offer a few nutrient-dense leaves to toss into a soup, salad or slaw.

It’s also a beautiful plant to have in the garden, and there are so many different leaf types to choose from. Some are curly and crinkled like Dwarf Blue Scotch, some are colourful and frilly like the deep purple Red Bore, and some are long and wrinkly like the ever-popular Cavolo Nero.

I always start a crop in late summer to early autumn. Like most plants in the cabbage family, the seed will germinate readily. I sow in multicell punnets filled with a quality seed-raising mix, planting 2 seeds per cell, 5mm deep. Once they come up, I thin to one healthy seedling per cell. The mix needs to be kept moist, and the young seedlings need sun, but not too much when it’s hot. A shadehouse is a good place to nurse tiny seedlings through the heat, or put your punnets in a shallow polystyrene box, place it in a spot that gets 4–5 hours of morning sun, and cover it with shadecloth when the temperatures soar.

Alternatively, buy seedlings at your local garden centre. Established seedlings can be planted in the ground near the end of the month in cool areas, but where it’s hot, first grow them in small pots in a position that gets morning sun. Liquid-fertilise once a week, and plant out in late March when the worst of the heat has passed.

Header image credit: iStock

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