Beautiful and bene

KALE, the humble cottars’ fare, has made a comeback. And so it should. This new favourite boasts many varieties, shapes and taste, as well as elegantly gracing any border.

It’s well known that brassicas are hard to grow. They insist on fertile soil, lots of space which they occupy for many months. And they require a fair dose of TLC: protection from cabbage rootfly, cabbage whites, slugs and aphids. Cabbages and caulis aren’t particularly beautiful, provide food for only one meal and leave a large, vacant spot once harvested.

I always use cabbage collars to ward off rootfly but, apart from during plague years like this one, I find cabbage whites rarely attack kale. Instead of hearting up like cabbages, this leaf crop needs much less feed and tolerates quite close neighbours.

As one of the biggest selling points for gardeners, kale not only looks stunning but, as a mature plant, it crops and occupies a piece of ground from August right through until April. During the winter, when a bed can look pretty tired, this fine plant continues to look good.

With any planting, I always stress the importance of leaf shape, colour and texture and the beauty about kale is that it offers all three. Green curled kale varieties range in colour from pale green to deeper blue-green and the tightly curled edges contrast nicely with more usually flat leaves.

The cavolo nero varieties, including the original Nero di Toscana, are also curled but produce long, dark, elegantly slim stems. They burst out like a brimming coronet from short stalks, rather than neatly ordered sideshoots.

Until this year, my undoubted favourite kale was Ragged Jack, which is identical to Red Russian. This 75cm specimen has striking serrated bluish crimson leaves with red stalks.

Ragged Jack survives any winter, providing an excellent spring picking. On the other hand, Nero di Toscana, long cultivated in Italy, may succumb to a harsh spell. Ideally, select varieties with guaranteed succession in mind.

And with all this popularity, breeders are constantly developing new varieties and even crossing kale with other brassicas. One example of this is the flower sprout, a cross between kale and sprouts. They’re not always genetically stable, so you’ll have a mix of greener or redder plants.

I’ve also noticed this colour variation in one of the most recent cultivars, Emerald Ice, my “kale of the year”. The clean white of its stalks almost

Apples have traditionally been stored on wooden trays, with space between them for ventilation