Kale is a pretty hardy plant and it will survive the pacific northwest winter providing early season food as the mature plant comes alive in the spring and shoots into action. We got a few good kale feeds in this spring. My Russian red kale is now going to flower and I'm letting it carry on. A few years ago in Vancouver my friend Sharon Kallis pointed out to me that the kale flowers are real food in salads. It gives them some colour (yellow) and a little peppery zip... it's amazing how food plants keep giving.
The other thing that has happened is that i am attracting all kinds of finches and today when i was out in the garden an Anna's Hummingbird cam within a few feet of me to visit the flowers of our fine kale plant. It is a great little bird chirping and hovering and it pleased me immensely to share a bounty with a loving non destructive animal.
Part of me wants to just let this kale go to seed, and the seeds drop and see if new kale will come. I do have a melon and some potatoes coming up from from last years recycled seed supply... i actually had a few melons but the slugs killed off the excess.
It was about this time last year when i went to a a city repair home to learn about building cob structures and there was a bunch of hippies with happy grins declaring they were making Kale chips. Inside i kind of scoffed, but i was wrong. Kale chips are good stuff... if you can salt and spice and oil something to a fine crisp you are doing good. My brain was on cob structures and it had no time for sitting around waiting for kale chips to bake in an oven, let alone be happy about that fact.
Let me clarify... if you are making something nutritious that you grew, even if it is a bit salty for the kidney... do it. On that note; remember the loop of Henley.. i had to pass a test on that one time a long time ago, but remember my father was a staunch science teacher, gardener and consummate dietitian strictly adhering to the latest "wellness news" of the hour. Dad never grew kale, he was more of a squash and beans kind of guy... there was an asparagus patch, and carrot rowe's with the son instructed to plant one seed every inch down the line after the line was dug deep with peat and nitrogen based fertilizer. And if the son got lazy and threw too many seeds the later the son learned how to thin carrot seedlings, which in turn taught the son to do it right in the first place. Harsh lesson or good education? I would go with good education... no point raising some soft fragile kid who thinks that their perspective is the only one that matters... for sure have your opinions and air them but be sure to check them against the facts and proceed accordingly. Most times kids will naturally do the right thing, their moral compass is astounding... i have often thought that we should have children as judges because their sense of justice is real and not affected by politics or economics.
But this post is about kale right... i think i stated that in the title.. i guess i could could change that now, but that would mean deleting this sentence and rethinking, which might be a good idea on some levels, but goes against the mantra of the SR blog series.
I get my kids to harvest the kale leaves, and my oldest goes to town washing the leaves, and then we make the kale chips. We use truffle infused olive oil, salt and spice and bake the foliage with a keen eye on not burning it... you can do it at 200-400 on your oven but you have to keep an eye on it. If you want to really dial it in get some crushed nuts in on the seasoning... then you get some roasted nut salted olive oil infused spiced greens that are good for you...
OK notes on the community garden next...
SR
The other thing that has happened is that i am attracting all kinds of finches and today when i was out in the garden an Anna's Hummingbird cam within a few feet of me to visit the flowers of our fine kale plant. It is a great little bird chirping and hovering and it pleased me immensely to share a bounty with a loving non destructive animal.
Part of me wants to just let this kale go to seed, and the seeds drop and see if new kale will come. I do have a melon and some potatoes coming up from from last years recycled seed supply... i actually had a few melons but the slugs killed off the excess.
It was about this time last year when i went to a a city repair home to learn about building cob structures and there was a bunch of hippies with happy grins declaring they were making Kale chips. Inside i kind of scoffed, but i was wrong. Kale chips are good stuff... if you can salt and spice and oil something to a fine crisp you are doing good. My brain was on cob structures and it had no time for sitting around waiting for kale chips to bake in an oven, let alone be happy about that fact.
Let me clarify... if you are making something nutritious that you grew, even if it is a bit salty for the kidney... do it. On that note; remember the loop of Henley.. i had to pass a test on that one time a long time ago, but remember my father was a staunch science teacher, gardener and consummate dietitian strictly adhering to the latest "wellness news" of the hour. Dad never grew kale, he was more of a squash and beans kind of guy... there was an asparagus patch, and carrot rowe's with the son instructed to plant one seed every inch down the line after the line was dug deep with peat and nitrogen based fertilizer. And if the son got lazy and threw too many seeds the later the son learned how to thin carrot seedlings, which in turn taught the son to do it right in the first place. Harsh lesson or good education? I would go with good education... no point raising some soft fragile kid who thinks that their perspective is the only one that matters... for sure have your opinions and air them but be sure to check them against the facts and proceed accordingly. Most times kids will naturally do the right thing, their moral compass is astounding... i have often thought that we should have children as judges because their sense of justice is real and not affected by politics or economics.
But this post is about kale right... i think i stated that in the title.. i guess i could could change that now, but that would mean deleting this sentence and rethinking, which might be a good idea on some levels, but goes against the mantra of the SR blog series.
I get my kids to harvest the kale leaves, and my oldest goes to town washing the leaves, and then we make the kale chips. We use truffle infused olive oil, salt and spice and bake the foliage with a keen eye on not burning it... you can do it at 200-400 on your oven but you have to keep an eye on it. If you want to really dial it in get some crushed nuts in on the seasoning... then you get some roasted nut salted olive oil infused spiced greens that are good for you...
OK notes on the community garden next...
SR
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