I love my kale plants. I started sowing them back in April, and now have seven of them dotted around the garden. A couple of them are in the veg patch, but I’ve used the rest to create winter interest in the flower border as so much else has died back. In this snow, they are standing tall like palm trees among some other mushy-looking plants. They are so tough, the frost can’t touch them.
In fact, a good old cold snap (or enormous and inconvenient dumping of snow) brings out the flavour in Kale. Just like parsnips, the mature leaves are best eaten after frosts, and grow beautifully sweet. They are fab wilted for a minute in some butter with a little salt and pepper, or shredded and mixed into a stir fry.
What winter vegetables are you growing this year? And how is your garden faring in the frost and snow?
on Dec 23rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Very nice photos. Your kale looks great, considering the cold weather.
This winter I’m growing lettuce, chard, mache, onions, but its all in greenhouse. And it’s so far, so good.
on Dec 23rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Hullo,
That sounds like a very good plan, keeping everything in the greenhouse. I’m not sure if the chard will make it through all of this, and the ground is frozen solid, but hey, at least it’s killing off lots of bugs!
on Dec 30th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I always have some kind of kale in the garden, but haven’t yet tried this one (called ‘Palmkool’ in Dutch, which can be translated as ‘Palm cabbage’).
I’m diffinitely going to try it next year.
(Although we had some rather cold weather here in Belgium too, the chard in the greenhouse (an accidently seedling that we just left growing) is still crisp and green.)