00:05That wonderful world of kale.
00:08All of the kales we see here were sown in the summer.
00:12Their natural time of growth is late summer and autumn.
00:17They're part of the large brassica family,
00:19which sets its seeds flowers
00:21and sets seeds late spring, early summer.
00:24Seeds fall to the ground.
00:25This is if it happened as it would like to happen naturally.
00:28And then they germinate in the heat of the summer
00:31and grow strongly through the autumn, over winter
00:34and set seed the following spring.
00:36So when you sow kale in the summer,
00:39you get all that lovely period of leafy growth,
00:41which tends to be more healthy.
00:43There's less pests around
00:44as long as you can be on top of the caterpillars.
00:47Here, I actually spray a soil bacteria
00:50called Bacillus thuringiensis.
00:52And I mentioned that in my pest video, how to control pests.
00:56It's worth looking at
00:57if you want to find out more about how to keep caterpillars
00:59off your kale leaves.
01:01There are other methods as well.
01:03So all of these were sown 5th of July
01:07and this bed had beetroot before.
01:09So after we harvested the last beetroot,
01:12we simply tidied it up.
01:14Didn't spread anything else.
01:16No more compost, no fertilizer, nothing like that.
01:19Just the residual goodness
01:20from the compost bread last December and planted kale.
01:24And I want to show you the different types there are
01:27to give you an idea of the range of flavors and shapes
01:30and colors that you can have
01:31and how they grow so differently.
01:33Like this one here is called Altmarker.
01:38It's a German kale.
01:39I'm quite big on German provenance of seeds at the moment.
01:42So I'm finding they've got some really good choices.
01:46This one is called Carina.
01:49Both the Carina and the Gomenza are Ethiopian kales.
01:54So they come from Africa and they grow amazingly differently.
01:58At the moment, they're making lots of small leaves,
02:00which I'm putting in salad mixes because they're so delicious.
02:05And we were doing a course the other day
02:08and someone commented particularly on that leaf.
02:10So what is that?
02:11Just amazing flavor.
02:14Next up, we have more of a cooking kale.
02:16So this is one of the many, many kinds of curly kale,
02:21which are good for, they're a bit tougher than,
02:25the flat leaf kales tend to be more tender.
02:28And these are a bit tougher, but great cooked up or stir fried.
02:33And that one's called Lurkenzungen.
02:37Here we have the well-known Italian type of Cavallo Nero
02:42from Tuscany, I think.
02:44These make these amazing tall dark green leaves,
02:49which many chefs I know rate most highly for flavor.
02:53This is one of the best.
02:55When you cook them, you want to cut the kale off the central rib
03:00because that is a bit tough, but you do get quite a high yield.
03:03We've already picked many leaves off this kale.
03:05And this one was the exception to the others.
03:07It was sown a little bit earlier.
03:08It was sown on the 10th of May
03:10and planted here on the longest day, 21st of June,
03:14after clearing again, some beetroot from there.
03:18This is another of the Ethiopian kales.
03:20This is the one called Gomenza.
03:21It's slightly more colored than the Carina.
03:24And again, really tasty in salad.
03:29And finally, of this section, we have Red Russian.
03:33This is a traditional British kale,
03:37sometimes called Ragged Jack, or there are variations of it.
03:40It's not a closely bred uniform type.
03:45And we're harvesting at the moment the larger leaves of the Red Russian
03:50and just breaking them apart like this
03:53because these little bits I put in the salad bags, actually,
03:57because it's one of these very tender, flat-leafed kales,
04:01just really tasty to eat raw.
04:05And then just looking ahead,
04:07what's all this going to do in the winter and next spring?
04:11In the winter, I'm going to put a net over.
04:13We're fortunate here, we don't have pigeons.
04:14That can be a big problem with these lovely leafy greens.
04:17But if you do, you would need to have a bird net over them all the time.
04:22Here, the birds, pigeons tend to come in December.
04:25So I will put a net over them then
04:27to keep them protected through the winter.
04:28They won't crop a lot in the winter, but occasional meals, very welcome meals.
04:33And then in the spring, you get another flush of growth.
04:35So that's in this case here, March, April.
04:38And towards the end of April, they start to make little flower buds,
04:41which are kind of like broccoli flowering stems of brassica family.
04:46So they're good to eat as well.
04:48So you get a very long period of harvest from one early summer sowing.
04:53To finish the kale video, there's a remarkable plant here,
04:57which is a perennial kale.
05:00So it's currently in its sixth year.
05:03I started life as a small plant in 2012 and never flowers.
05:09So this one, you can't buy seed.
05:12You have to take cuttings.
05:13It's called Taunton Dean.
05:16It's one of many types of perennial kale.
05:19Taunton Dean is quite a long stemmed one,
05:24and sometimes quite hard to keep up right.
05:26And to my amusement, this one, it's ended up reclining on the concrete here,
05:32which I thought was quite a nice example of using space that's not otherwise being used.
05:38And we're taking harvest from it.
05:41The way you harvest is taking lower leaves off each stem.
05:46So that's one harvest, for example, and then probably at the moment,
05:51but it's about one leaf or two a week from all of the many stems that are on this plant.
05:57And then the propagation is taking a stem itself,
06:02which you twist off from anywhere it's growing on the plant.
06:07And that little stalky bit on the end will put out new roots.
06:11So often what I do is put that in a glass of water on a sunny windowsill for two weeks.
06:19And then you see little white roots coming out the end,
06:21then put it in a pot of compost, no rooting powder or anything.
06:25They just want to grow.
06:26They look pretty dead for a while and then suddenly spring back to life.
06:29So that's how you propagate it.
06:30You just need the first one and you will need to look on the internet.
06:35I'm afraid I can't give you some of the many addresses wherever you are in the world, but
06:40perennial kale, if you start by putting that in,
06:44that will lead you to some choices suitable for your region.
Comments