Don’t forget to eat your greens, and your purples too

The calendar is telling us we’re at the start of autumn, and hints of red and orange are appearing in trees, more so in those feeling stressed. To complement the colours of nature, we’re adding a zillion mums to our doorsteps, hoping to extend summer as late into fall as possible. Alongside the mums there’ll be ornamental cabbages and kale, all creamy and pink and purple.

They’ll keep us going well past the first frosts, and then we can eat them. I’m definitely not suggesting you eat your chrysanthemums, even though you can probably find a recipe somewhere on the internet, and we all know how reliable that is. Some cultures in Asia do eat the leaves after cooking, even though the foliage can be a skin irritant for some people. The flower heads are also used sometimes to make a tea. Thanks, but I’ll stick to real tea, especially when I remember that the chrysanthemum plant is a source of pyrethrum, the pesticide.

You could, however, eat the ornamental kale, but it might not taste as good as the garden varieties. Mine are still in the garden, loving cooler temperatures and growing larger than ever — one is already looking me in the eye and might outgrow me. Some varieties can reach as high as two metres, while others are compact, like the ornamentals.

Some types of kale are grown for winter cattle feed. These they can be coarse and indigestible, and that doesn’t fit with the current image of kale as an amazing health food, the highlight of a gourmet dining experience. The nutritional benefits are deserved as the leaves are full of vitamins and minerals, all good for bones, skin and eyes, and they’re low in calories — for anyone who is calorie counting.

Kale is a cool weather plant and will continue to grow, almost into winter, surviving in temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius, extending the season after most things have been harvested. Stick a row cover over them, or provide some form of protection, and you could be eating kale all winter. The leaves can be harvested much earlier, usually when they reach the size of a hand, but they really do taste sweeter after they’ve been touched by frost.

We grow kale as an annual for the leaves, even though some varieties may be biennials. Leave those in the garden and in the second year, they’ll begin to grow again in spring. As the weather warms up, the plant will bolt, sending up a flower stalk.

These are not the flowers of the so-called flowering kale that are appearing on front porches this season. We call them flowering, except there are no flowers. It’s the feathery, ruffled leaves that form those colourful rosettes. We buy them now as potted plants, but these ornamentals can be grown from seed and planted in the garden in spring for a fall show.

Call me contrary, I wanted the best of both worlds, so in addition to planting kale in the vegetable garden I stuck a gorgeous, regal purple hybrid called Redbor in one of my flower beds. After it’s finished its performance as a stately feature plant, we’ll eat it.

In northern Germany, a whole culture has developed around kale. Between fall and mid-winter is the gruenkohl saison, when communities in the area hold annual kale festivals where a lot in all forms is consumed — soups, sausages and more. They also name a kale king or queen, so I imagine it’s not unlike Oktoberfest, and that’s coming up soon, another colourful sign that fall is here.