Hail the kale!

It’s the wonderful winter superveg that looks as good as it tastes – and now’s the time to sow it, says Monty Don

Midwinter may be bleak and our allotments reduced to muddy stands of sprouts looming out of the fog, but one winter vegetable still continues as fresh and – to me at least – appealing in the first few weeks of the year as it does in midsummer. This is kale. Kale is trendy – these days you can get kale ‘chips’, kale ‘seaweed’ and kale juices – but it has never been glamorous. This is a shame because it is beautiful. I tend to mostly grow one kind of kale nowadays – cavolo nero, aka black Tuscan kale – but you can get frizzy kale, bright-green kale, red kale such as the plumcoloured ‘Redbor’, or ‘Red Russian’ which has grey-green foliage with deep purple stems. The latter is a particularly handsome plant and I grow it for its decorative value alone, although I always eat some almost as a matter of principle. However, I think the deep, dark green of cavolo nero surpasses all other varieties in taste.

It looks spectacular too. The leaves, which grow more or less vertically from the main stem, are long and narrow with a pale-green stalk running as a stripe down the centre and the leaves themselves are bobbled and bubbled like padding or chequered bubble wrap. They start modestly but will reach around 60cm (2ft) in height when mature. The idea is to eat them when they are about 15-23cm (6-9in) long, big enough not to be fiddly but small enough to be a little bit more tender.

However, kale is never truly tender. You can eat it raw when the leaves are very young, and it makes an excellent salad with oranges, but the truth is that raw kale is awfully tough on your digestion, however much health gurus will sing its praises. Better to strip the foliage from the central stalk and boil or steam it. This is where kale – as opposed to any other brassica – comes into its own because it will take hours of cooking without becoming mushy or losing taste. This makes it ideal for soups and stews, and for centuries it was an essential ingredient of meals right across Europe. But it also makes an excel- lent vegetable in its own right and I love it boiled for about 15 minutes, drained and then reheated with garlic and cream. This also makes an excellent sauce for pasta.

But first you must grow it. I make my first sowing now, in January, under cover and plant the seedlings out 23cm (9in) apart in late March. It germinates very easily and can also be sown directly into a seed bed as soon as the ground warms up. This first batch could last a full 12 months but I tend to eat them all when the leaves are young and tender and sow a second batch in spring for winter consumption. These do best with 60- 90cm (2-3ft) between each plant and need staking from mid-summer. Because they have lots of room I always underplant them with a lettuce crop which will be cleared as and when the weather turns in mid-autumn.

As with all brassicas, they do best in rich soil that is neutral to alkaline. Traditionally brassicas follow legumes in the vegetable rotation, using nitrogen that has been ‘fixed’ in the soil by the legumes, but I often plant them before legumes. Even if you’re following the conventional cycle, always add a dressing of compost to the ground before planting. They get going quicker as a result and provide an earlier harvest of tender leaves. Firm the ground before planting and set each plant deep in the soil, firming it in really well, as they become very top-heavy and need a good, secure base.