VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans - French Beans - Runner Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Kohl Rabi Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions - spring sowing Onions - overwintering Onions - special types Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley NEW Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vines - Cherries Tomatoes : Vines - Larger Tomatoes : Bulgarian Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Yacon

~ KALE ~

For those of you who don't grow Kale - you should! An easily-grown plant, it is a great cooked 'green' for winter,
and the young leaves are also fantastic in salads.

Nero Di Toscana (Early strain)
A traditional black kale from Tuscany, also known as Palm Kale or Black Tuscan. The long leaves are quite deeply savoyed, but not as frilly as curly kale, so much more resistant to aphids and whitefly.

People normally use the mature leaves as a cooked vegetable, but this has such a nice flavour that we eat the thinnings and baby leaves raw in salad. Sow late spring to early summer for use late summer through to early winter.

As well as sowing in Spring outdoors, you can alternatively sow it in a polytunnel in late summer/early autumn and pick a few leaves at a time all winter when other salad ingredients are scarce. When it finally bolts, the flower shoots are a gourmet treat raw or cooked.

Delicious. Sow spring/summer for use late summer through into winter.

Order KaNT - (250 seed) £1.89

Order KASU approx 150 seed [OG1] £2.43

When? For sowing in spring, transplant out when bigger, and harvest in autumn / overwinter.

Order KARU approx 200 seed [CO1] £1.78

When? For sowing in spring, transplant out when bigger, and harvest in autumn / overwinter.

Order KaTS approx 200 seed [OG1] £1.69

When? For sowing in spring, transplant out when bigger, and harvest in autumn / overwinter.

East Friesian Palm Kale NEW
New for 2011, this is a particularly hardy curly kale that grows very tall with crinkled leaves. It can be harvested from late summer all the way through the winter and into the following spring.

An ancient and valuable variety from Ostfriesland in North Germany, it is still kept alive by a few small farmers after thousands of years.

As well as eating the sweet and tasty crown leaves yourselves, one source suggests that you should feed your rabbits, chickens, sheep and horses on the lower leaves. However, we think that even those of you without such a selection of livestock in your garden will find it a valuable variety!

Please note this is incredibly rare, this is our spare breeding seed; in order to make it available to you this year we have made up slightly smaller packets than we would prefer, but to be honest 100 kale plants should be plenty for anyone.

In 2013 we plan to do a large grow-out of this wonderful kale , and we will increase the size of the packets then.

Order KaEF - approx 100 to 120 seed [OG1] £2.45

When? For sowing in spring, transplant out when bigger, and harvest in autumn / overwinter.

Saving Brassica Seed:

You do need to make sure they aren't crossed with anything,
as many of the brassicas (kale, cabbages, cauliflowers etc) will cross with each other very readily.

Flower stalks from a good-sized population - 20 plants absolute minimum - are hung up to dry,
then broken open over a bowl (or old baby bath in this case).

The bits of pod are screened out with a sieve or a soil riddle
- but you can instead winnow them off in a breeze pretty easily if you prefer.