How to Grow a Year-Round Supply of Kale

Do you want to know how to have a never ending supply of kale at your house? Not the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning. I mean, what's wrong with you? All right. I am going to show you how you can grow a year round supply of kale. You only need a little bit of space, a little bit of time, and you're going to be saying kale. Yeah. All year long. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. My name is Nicole Burke and I am so thrilled you're hanging out with me. My goal is to get you into the garden. Just five minutes a day. It doesn't take that much time. You can be a busy person, you can be a business person, you can be a mom, a dad, a sister, a brother, a kid, a grandkid, a grandparent. The garden is for all of us. And kale is for all of us too. I was just listening. No, just reading this book, how not to Die. Have you heard of it? It's kind of. It's a great book to read before you go to sleep, if you know what I mean. I literally keep it right next to my bedside table. Read a paragraph and then I am quickly snoring. It's a magical kind of thing. Anyway, the book is broken into all the different ways we do die because we are going to die. But it's like how not to die from, how not to die from cancer, how not to die from lung cancer, how not to die from depression, how not to die from heart disease, etc. And kale keeps coming up. I mean, I'm not lying when I say almost every category I've been reading in, he talks about kale and how it has all these benefits and how it's just so good for us and it's so good for treating so many of the, the ailments and the things that we tend toward with disease in our bodies. So, so if you're not. I know there's. I know some guys, like, there's some doctors out there that don't like kale, but I love it. And, and I know you will too. If you don't like kale right now, it's probably because you've been getting it from the wrong place. And that's called a grocery store. And you can grow your own and you can have a year round supply. Now I'm not saying it's outside in your garden year round, but you can grow enough to have a year round supply no matter where you live. So I'm going to break it down for you in this short podcast episode and show you how this is possible anywhere that you live. So let's start with month number one. And this could be December, November, December, January, February. Somewhere in the colder parts of the year. If you're listening and you're in the Southern hemisphere, welcome and flip that. So do this when it's your winter. Okay? So you're gonna start your seeds indoors. You do not need a lot of plants. All right? So you're only gonna need, depending on, you know, like, how many people you have in your family, you're gonna need, say, four to 12 plants of kale. That's about it. I always overdo it on the kale and, like, fill out the whole seed starting tray, and it's just too much. So you're going to start with some seeds. These are my favorite kinds of kale. I love Toscano kale, otherwise known as dinosaur kale. Those, like the huge, tall kale plants, the ones on my book, I'll see if I can find them, but they're huge. They're the dark, dark green. They make the best kale. What do you call those? Kale chips. I love Toscano kale. Those are going to be the huge plants. You want to start at least four of those seeds indoors. Then you're going to do. My next favorite is blue Scotch curled. That's a really nice, tightly curled kale. It doesn't have nearly as many pest issues, and it's just delicious in salads. Super crunchy. Start maybe three to four of those plants by seed. And then also I like a softer kale that I put in salads and things. And that would be like a red Russian kale. It's going to be a much softer, sweeter kale. It is going to be more prone to caterpillars, but it's worth it, believe me. So let's say four seeds of each. That's about 12 kale plants. You're going to start those from seed. They're super fast to sprout. They're in the Brassica family. They love cool weather. So that's why we start them indoors. You don't need a big, massive seed setting, seed starting system. You just do need an artificial light, though. You're not going to have enough light just from a window. So you can set yourself up just a little bitty contraption, a tray, some seed starting mix, and some kale seeds. Those three types are my fave. And then put the light really close to the seeds as they start. So it's going to take about two weeks for these seeds to start to grow and to set off their first true leaves. They're going to sprout faster than you expect. It's going to be like two or three days, and you've got this little tiny sprout coming out of the soil. But by about two weeks, you're going to start to see the first two leaves of that kale. Then you want to make sure that the kale is getting light right above the leaves and let it mature to have four, five, six leaves before you are ready to put it out into the garden. So at this point, we're probably in late February, early March, depending on what your climate's like. What you're looking for at this point is that there's still a chance of frost. You're at least probably 60 days before your last frost of the year. And the the top, like 3, 4 inches of your soil is workable. So I love to garden in raised beds. So that's where I'm planting my kale. You might be doing it in the ground. You need the first three or four inches of the ground to be warmed up and workable, which means you can stick a shovel in it and move the soil around. All right. It doesn't have to be completely, you know, defrosted at this point or thawed, but you do need that top 3 or 4 inches. So then you're going to transplant these into the garden space. You want to give each of your kale a full square foot. It needs a full square foot. These kale are going to be huge plants. I can't say the word huge. Big enough for you to get it. Okay. It's going to be a huge, tall plant, a wide plant. You need to give it each a square foot. So I like to plant it either right down the middle of a bed or in the corners of the bed. I'm not just going to do one bed of kale. I'm going to mix all different other kinds of plants in with it. But you want to be sure the kale gets a full square foot. So plant it into the garden. Give each plant a full square foot, and it's going to go in at least 60 days before your last frost. This plant is already well established. If you miss the boat on this, if you're listening and you're like, dang it, I am two months too late, and I can't start scale or it'll be like summertime, you're just going to go to a local nursery, look for some kale, and buy it from them instead. So then you're going to put your kale into the garden. It's already got four or five, six leaves on it, believe it or not. You can take your first harvest at this point. So you're going to go to the base of the plant, cut the outer leaves, maybe just one or two off of each plant, and have yourself your first ever homegrown kale salad. You could put this in a salad, a soup. You can make a smoothie with it however you want to do it. But this is going to be about four to five weeks after you started those seeds. You've got your plants in the ground, and you're just going to cut a few lower leaves from those plants. Okay, so now we are around 60, 50 days before the last frost. And every single week, you're going to come to those plants and cut the lower and outer leaves. So you're going to be making smoothies and salads. You can make sauteed dishes, whatever you want to. Beginning, you know, 50, 45 days before your last frost. You want to make this a weekly routine where you pull from the plant. So these plants, they are spurred on to create more leaves when you harvest from them. So the more you cut on those lower leaves, the more you stimulate the meristems of the plant. The meristems are the cells at the edge of the leaves and in the heart of the plant that makes more and more leaves. So, believe it or not, you know how they hear. I don't know if that story is true where, like, when you cut your hair, it makes your hair grow faster. Is that true? I don't know. But when you cut your kale, it makes your kale grow faster. Okay, I know that to be true. So you want to harvest from the bottom, the lower part of your plants every single week beginning at, you know, this fifth or sixth week since you started your seeds. When you get closer and closer to your last frost date, you. This is when you want to start harvesting to the point where you use some and then you freeze some. All right? So you're going to cut enough each week where you can make your own salads and dishes and smoothies. And then you're going to take some, you're going to rinse it, give it a really nice rinse. You can even dip it into some vinegar water if you want to. I don't think that's necessary. But rinse it well, dry it off well, and then you're just going to put it into a tight, a sealed container. So you can do a Ziploc bag or a sealed glass or plastic container and put it into your freezer. You can stick a ton of kale leaves into these bags and containers because they're just leaves, right? It's literally like little pieces of paper that can just stack and stack and stack on top of one another. So each and every week, harvest a little bit to use fresh, and then take the other half and freeze it. You want to do this all throughout the early spring and into the summer, like right around your last frost and then into the next few months. This is going to be your prime time for the kale. Your kale will last through the summer, but this is when it's really shining. It's not infested with pests yet. The temperatures haven't warmed up, the aphids haven't arrived yet. The caterpillars haven't arrived yet. This is the moment that the kale shines. And so you want to get the most out of these plants, and that's by doing a double harvest. So you harvest to eat fresh, and then you harvest to freeze, and you're going to do this week after week after week after week. Then, as you get into the middle of the summer, where, you know, now 30 days, 60 days past our last frost, this is when most likely you're going to start to have some pest challenges. So caterpillars are arriving, aphids are arriving. You're still going to be doing your weekly harvest, and then you can just get more selective about how much you're going to save and preserve for later. Remember, you got tons from those first few months in the spring garden. And so now you might do like 2/3 harvest to use fresh and a third harvest to use and store for later. You're going to continue to do this all through the summer and then even into the fall. Now, when it comes fall, you can make a choice. So you can either keep your plants that you put in in the spring if they're still looking nice and healthy. So when I've lived in, I've grown kale in Nashville, in Chicago, and in Houston. And I've had different experiences with kale in those places. So in a place like Houston, where it gets super hot in the summer, some summers my kale would make it and look great. And some summers, by the time I hit July or August, it just needed to go. You know what I mean? And so at that point, you would pull that plant and then start all over again. So, same thing you did back in January, starting seeds indoors or buying a new plant, you're going to do that right then to get ready for the fall season. Now, if you're like I was in Chicago, I would get through the summer, and my kale looked beautiful. It was picture perfect. There were maybe one or two caterpillars, but these plants were just huge and dynamic and so green and so delicious. And so I just let them go all the way through the summer, well into the fall. There was no need, absolutely no need to start over and to plant new plants. So depending where you live, summertime is your choice. Time it's to decide, does the kale plant stay? Because it can. It's a biennial, so it's going to stay in the garden as long as you let it, or can it stay? Is it good enough to stay, or do I need to pull it and then plant a new one in its place? So, totally up to you. It's not a big deal to switch it out, but if your plant is beautiful and healthy, it'll keep producing. Now, the. The leaves aren't going to be as sweet and as soft, but they'll still be very prolific. So you make that choice right around the summer. Am I going to replace it, or am I going to keep the one that I have? And then you're going to up your routine back to what you were doing in the spring. So in the spring, you were doing these half and half harvest, half for the for immediate fresh use and half for frozen. And you're going to be able to pick that back up in the fall because that's when the temperatures come back down and kale is thriving again. So kale loves the temps when it's like 45 to 75. So that's when you're going to get the healthiest, most beautiful, most prolific harvest. So we've slowed it down in the summer. It was just like, mostly for what we're going to use fresh. But now when it comes to fall, we double up our harvest again. Harvest some to eat fresh and to freeze, and then that brings us to wintertime. So whenever that hits for you, whether it's October, November, December, January, when finally the garden is completely shut down, things have just frozen over. You just head to the freezer, and there you will find all the kale that you need for any winter dishes. So you can make frittatas and omelets and smoothies and juices, all the things, pretty much everything you were making in the other seasons. With your kale, besides a salad are going to work perfectly with that frozen kale. So I use the frozen kale with all my juices, with my smoothies. And the great thing was I preserved that harvest the second I harvested it, right? And so all those nutrients are bottled up in those greens. They weren't shipped across the country. They are ready to be used. And the minute I use them, I'm going to get the nutrients of that spring and fall garden right to my body, even though it is the middle of winter. So you're going to use up your frozen kale as soon as your garden closes down, if your garden closes down. And then before you know it, it is time to start the seeds for the very next spring. So I, in my Chicago, Chicago garden, I would be making kale smoothies. November, December, January, had tons of snow on the garden, looking outside, drinking a green drink that I grew myself. And then, well, I didn't grow the drink myself, but I grew the greens. And then I would just head down to the basement, plant my kale seeds and know that the whole process was just about to start all over again. And so just by the time, say, March, April came around, my freezer would be empty, I'd be out of all that kale, and I would be starting to harvest those first tiny leaves from the garden to start the process all over again. And so that is the way you can have a year round supply of kale. If you're in a warm place like in Houston, you're going to have kale in your garden year round. And your freezing time may actually be the summer when the temperatures get so high that the kale doesn't, you know, doesn't thrive or is having pest issues. That's when you could utilize your frozen kale. If you're in a cold place like Chicago, you're going to use your frozen kale through the wintertime. And then if you're in a mild climate like I am here in Nashville, then you might have two times of year when you use that frozen kale. One might be right in the middle of the winter, and one might be right just for a short period in the middle of the summer, if it gets super hot, you have to pull your old plants and start over. But if you use this method of a half and half harvest during the spring and the fall, the times when kale is thriving, then you can grow a year round supply of kale with just 12 seeds. So 12 seeds, they probably cost about 12 cents. And you are going to get hundreds of dollars worth of kale from those 12 cents. I promise you you're going to have all the kale you ever need. You're going to be like the poster child for the how not to Die book because you're just going to be filling your body with so much good stuff, taking care of yourself and doing it right from your own garden. So I hope this inspires you to grow your own kale this year and to have a year round supply just like I do. You can learn all about growing kale in my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit and how to set up your garden inside my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. And we have a calendar for you that you can customize@gardenary.com calendar. You're just going to put in two dates and then we fill out all the rest. And this will help you know when to plant what wherever you live. So go to gardenary.com calendar and if you want to learn more about growing kale and all kinds of other things, check out our upcoming workshop. You can find that@gardenary.com thanks so much for listening and being part of the Grow youw Self Podcast. I'll see you next time. 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