Perennial Greens (was Training our taste buds )

[Guest guest]

Be careful with the collards! they grow so fast they shade other

plants. They really like it here and survived the summer fine. I

have frozen about 10 lbs of it already this year....

I have been looking in the files for new (to me) collard recipes.

Happy growing,

Roseta

 

 

, " slim_langer "

<slim_langer wrote:

>

> Hi Roseta,

> I too am in SoCal, so if we keep tabs from time to time, it could be

> helpful. I'm letting my bolting red and lacinato kale go as they

> will, with an eye to collecting the seeds and then cutting them back.

> I notice that alot of side-shoots grow from the thickenening stems of

> established kale plants, producing alot of new growth and leaves. I

> haven't noticed that the leaves from the bolting kale plants are any

> less edible, either. Though the plants are less-elegant looking, I

> like the hummingbirds and big black bees coming around after them.

>

> I also have a small patch of something called " perpetual spinach "

> which is a kind of swiss chard, maybe a good switch planting from all

> my Brassica species. These plants took a long while, 3 or 4 months, to

> get started but have gotten to be very vigorous and productive with no

> bolting. Each 10 inch plant is putting out 5 or 6 new hand-sized

> pale-green leaves a week, and the stems are starting to grow long,

> putting my actual (Springer) spinach to shame! The taste is rather

> bland though, not particularly noticeable, good or bad, raw or cooked.

> but very nutritious, from what I can glean from the calorie-counting

> sites.

>

> I've got some Georgia collard seeds, and am prepping a spot for a

> little patch, hopefully with purslane, sorrel and more perpetual and

> New Zealand spinach growing lover down as a kind of ground cover. I

> understand that the collards grow pretty high and well, maybe year

> round, but may need to be replaced once or twice a year (??).

>

> I've used seeds from Bountiful Gardens OP site, SeedSavers.Org, Park

> Seeds. John Scheepers and now Territorial Seeds website. Park seeds

> advertise and spam too much but the seeds were mostly good even when

> " on sale " at the end of a season. Scheepers seeds have been generous

> amounts and high quality. I like the many odd varieties and philosophy

> of the Bountiful Gardens site, the seeds are good, and the prices

> often seem so, but a number of the descriptions are misleading and

> some of the seed counts seem a little stingy. I just bought some BT

> pesticide for my diamond-back moths from Territorial seeds -- along

> with some purslane and some other seeds that I can't comment on

> because they just got started, but fast service and they always tell

> you how much seed, in weight and number, for your $$.

>

> There's a new bird in my yard, the Black-Phoebe, a flycatcher! They

> are very plentiful and all the time swooping around. I saw some

> before, but never so many. They try to catch the moths too!

>

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Phoebe

>

> Take care,

>

> Slim

>

>

> , " rosetalleo " <rosetalleo@>

> wrote:

> >

> > Slim, thanks for the information. You must live in warm weather too?

> >

> > I tasted New Zealand spinach back when I lived in Oz. I was unaware

> it did better in warm

> > weather, so I will try this when i get seed. We did get some of the

> green wave mustard

> > but have not planted yet, will do in the fall. I got some mustards

> planted in the winter but

> > I bought seeds from a bad supplier (Horizon seeds, stay away from

> them). so only one or

> > two sprouted, and i got more greens from my volunteer lettuce!

> >

> > Collards apparently really like warm weather and I have lots of

> collards going. I planted

> > too much and mixed the seed with red and lacinato kales so I am

> thinning it and letting

> > the kale get larger. I even got gai lan to grow for me this year!

> and bok choi too. It is

> > getting too warm for them though, so they will find themselves in a

> dish soon....our red

> > russian kale flowered with nice yellow flowers and we cut them,

> trying to get it to stay

> > perennial and give us more leaves, let's see what happens...we have

> been picking the kale

> > weekly for about 16 months now. That is a lot of kale out of one

> patch!

> >

> > Roseta

> >

>