I had intended to write this week about succession planting, but when I heard the news on Friday that legendary guitarist and songwriter J.J. Cale passed away, I knew I had to focus on one vegetable in particular
One of the favorite parts of my job is being an ambassador to kale.
It always surprises me when I find a participant who is unfamiliar with this “super food,” but it seems to happen all the time. Then I get to describe it: “more nutritious than spinach, sweeter than collards, hardier than chard, the purple-veined diva of greens, the savoyed sweetheart of the coles” and so on. Even if I don’t sense my enthusiasm rubbing off, I help them find a suitable patch of ground and plant several of our starts. With a flat of kale starts in my passenger seat nearly everywhere I go these days, I am pretty sure I know what Johnny Appleseed felt like. Call Me the Breeze…I put kale in the ground and Roll On.
I am often asked how to prepare kale and I really need to work on a succinct answer. I steam it, chop it and put it in pancake batter; I bake it into crisps; I slip it into soups, sauté it for omelets, and of course, I snip it into salads. I could go on. I often do. Mama Don’t Allow many meals without kale ‘round here.
I have also taken to handing out a section of row cover with the baby kale plants—otherwise their tiny leaves are likely to look like Swiss cheese in a day. Flea beetles love this plant as much as I do, and when put on right after planting and sealed around the edges, the row cover keeps them safe from harm. I have also found that surrounding the little plants with a moat of cornmeal will keep the slugs from devouring them After Midnight.
For all they have given us, I want to thank kale, hero of the greens, and Cale, hero of the blues. May your roots run deep and your music live on.
–Erica
Great blog post! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Nice post. I love Cale and Kale.
Great post. I’ve been thinking about Kale a lot the last few months. I ‘discovered’ kale in California and have found myself really missing it here in France. It is fairly impossible to find. In trying to find out where/if I could get kale here, I discovered there is an American woman in Paris on a mission to bring kale to France. http://thekaleproject.com/ 🙂 I myself am hoping to work on a much smaller scale and asked a friend who was visiting to bring me some seeds. He brought some ‘dinosaur kale’ seeds. I am not at all a gardener and don’t really have much space to garden, but I am hoping to plant some at school where we have a little garden. However, I was wondering if you knew if it is possible to plant kale in containers and if you know the answer to this, what kind of container might be best. Anyway, great article and great blog.