~ 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.
Sowing Information
Homesteader's Kale Mix - BREED YOUR OWN KALE PROJECT
A fun project for you! A diverse breeding population of hardy kales with different shapes & colours. The idea is that you pick & eat the leaves as normal, but also select the ones you like most and let them flower and make seed for next year.
Derived from The Experimental Farm Network’s perennial kale mix, ‘Homesteader's Kaleidoscopic’, bred by Chris Homanics. This strain is now is mostly normal biennial kales that we’ve selected that seem to be tastier and do better in our climate.
about 100 seed, organic. £
Sowing Information
As a breeding project, there are two possibilities here:
You can let only a chosen particular sub-population flower (narrowing down the diversity) and in time (5 generations roughly) - you'll have your own unique kale variety.
Or you can keep the diversity, and only take out any less good plants - and even add in other kales to mix it up further if you want.
Finally, the original population was from a project to breed perennial kales, and about 10% of our strain will still do that - so you could try selecting for a new perennial kale variety if you wanted. We have decided to maintain it as normal biennials because they seem to be more tender and more tasty.
[Note: Its a Brassica oleracea kale (as opposed to russian type kales that are B. napus) so will also cross with flowering broccoli, cabbage etc.]
Red Curly Kale
Tightly curled leaves with a deep purple colour, this variety is very frost hardy and will stand well over winter.
The flowering shoots in Spring are also delicious , and look pretty with yellow petals contrasting with the purple leaves.
230 seed £
True Siberian Kale
A fast growing Kale, with large frilly blue-green leaves. This great kale (originally from Seeds of Change) was given to us by Andrew and Sarah, the ‘Seed Ambassadors’ who toured many small seed collections in 2006, taking the best varieties from one country to another.
We really like it because not only is it particularly quick, tasty and tender, it is also very cold-hardy. It can be picked through winter in many areas.
200 seed, organic. £
Red Ursa Kale
A great kale particularly useful for winter and spring harvest, combining the broadleaf frills of ‘Siberian’ with the color of ‘Red Russian’.. The large upright plants have beautiful deep red-purple leaves with a unique shape - gently frilled at the edges.
Bred by kale expert Frank Morton specifically for home gardeners - with emphasis on extra cold resistance and flavour. The leaves are tender and sweet even when big, and the flowering shoots when it finally bolts are also very nice both cooked or in salads.
Sweet & Hardy. Very rare. If you like it, keep your own seed using the instructions supplied!
200 seed, organic. £
Asparagus Kale
We are pleased to introduce this hardy grey-green kale that has been selected for its profusion of tender shoots in spring. While you can take leaves to eat as you would with any kale, this variety has particularly sweet tasty sprouts in spring, like a green version of sprouting broccoli.
Keep picking them so it doesn’t stop production. Seed produced for us by Debbie Rees at Blaenffos.
250 seed, organic. £
East Friesian Palm Kale
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 has been grown for thousands of years and is still kept going by a few small-scale farmers.
Please note this is incredibly rare, in order to make it available to you we have made up slightly smaller packets than we would prefer, but to be honest 200 or so kale plants should be plenty for anyone.
200 seed, organic. £
Red Ruffled Kale - EXCELLENT FLAVOUR
Another amazing variety from kale expert Frank Morton, bred specifically for home gardeners. It has delicious leaves, with pretty red veins, which become gently ruffled as it gets bigger. The shape and colour look great both in the garden and on the plate.
Pick the leaves in winter as a normal kale, but in spring it will also produce delicious flower sprouts, just like a kale version of sprouting broccoli. These "napini" are a welcome harvest from late March through April and even May. Yum!
A very rare variety, not available commercially, this is a lovely new crop of organic seed from our farm.
Beautiful and tasty; what more could you want from a kale?
200 seeds, organic. £
Sowing Information
When? For sowing in spring, transplant out when bigger, and harvest leaves as needed all summer, autumn & overwinter.
Sutherland Kale ("Càil Cataibh" in Gaelic)
Simply the best! Back in 2003 we were sent a small sample of kale seed by Vicky Schilling, of Ullapool, with the following note attached:
I am sending you some seed of Sutherland Kale given me by an 80yr old in Sutherland, its an old variety grown by the crofters. We grew it last season and its lovely, very tender green leaves on plants that grow waist high - need staking! Cooks just like spinach and lasts through the hungry gap.
We tried it out and were really impressed. It is the most vigorous and resilient kale we have seen. It shrugged off attack by aphids, cabbage white caterpillars, ravenous goats, and 70 mph freezing sleet overwinter. In each case it sprang back, growing new leaves with no trouble in spring when at its most valuable. And when it starts flower, the shoots are good to eat too, very much like sprouting broccoli shoots.
In 2007 we recieved a bit more history about this kale, from Vicky, who has been researching the background of the Kale she sent us:
The old lady the Kale came from is Elizabeth Woolcombe, of West Drummie in Sutherland. She is in fact 93, and her daughter has remembered where they got the Sutherland Kale from. It was given to them by Angus Simmonds about 50 years ago, he was doing research on Kales at Edinburgh University at the time."
A real success of home seed-saving. This was extinct other than the few seeds given to us. But since we rescued it, and offered it in the catalogue, people have saved their own seed all over the country and even Europe.
Do keep your own seed using the instructions supplied!
at least 250 seeds, organic. £
Dazzling Blue Kale
An amazing kale bred specially for home gardeners by Hank Keogh at Gathering Together Farm, this is a blue-green palm kale with a striking pink midrib. This one is a real performer and has become one of our most reliable kales in the garden.
It performs really well, and tastes great - like a Tuscan kale but with a lighter & fresher flavour; probably the best-tasting kale we've got.
Eye-catching , excellent flavour and very winter hardy.
250 seed, organic. £
Nero Di Toscana (Early strain)
A traditional variety 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.
Normally used as a cooked vegetable, but this has such a nice flavour that we eat the thinnings and baby leaves raw in salad.
Delicious. Sow spring/summer for use late summer through into winter.
200 seed, organic. £
Sowing Information
As well as sowing in Spring , you can also 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.
