Hail the kale!

Hardy, healthy and handsome, kale is easy to grow and will keep producing delicious new leaves for months, says Monty Don

Around this time of year, when I’m ordering my vegetable seeds and thinking about what to grow, I always make a list of new varieties or even new vegetables that I would like to try. However, there are some tried and trusted favourites that I will never forego – and kale is one of them.

Now, kale is hardly a very glamorous vegetable. I notice it is getting some acclaim as a particularly healthy food, with notable cholesterollowering qualities and plenty of iron, fibre, vitamin K and antioxidants. But if a food isn’t good to eat then it becomes a bit worthy and medicinal. Luckily, kale is delicious, even, as I found out just the other day, when juiced. Unlikely but true.

When I was a child, kale was only associated with winter fodder for the cows. But I learned to love it through the black Tuscan kale – ‘cavolo nero’ (also labelled ‘Nero di Toscana’) – which is as good as any cabbage and can be eaten young as part of a salad or allowed to mature, in which case it can be picked regularly as it will produce new leaves over many months. Very hardy and easy to grow, unlike cabbages it has the distinctive characteristic of remaining good even when boiled for a long time. This means it is very good for adding to soups and stews. It also, when mixed with garlic and cream, makes a fabulous sauce for pasta, rice or potatoes.

Kale does not make a solid heart but produces a sheaf of more or less upright leaves from its central stem. They can be crinkly, smooth, curly, green or a lovely pinky-purple, but they are all tough – hence its hardiness. They need boiling for up to half an hour, although a really hard frost does a lot to break down that toughness and improve the flavour.

Curly kale is much tougher to eat and harder to digest but looks magnificent. Red kale, such as the plum-coloured ‘Redbor’ or ‘Red Russian’, which has grey-green foliage with deep purple stems, is even more handsome and worth growing for its decorative value alone – although it is excellent when cooked properly. It germinates very easily and can be sown direct in a seed bed as soon as the ground warms up, but I make my first sowing at the beginning of February, under cover, either sowing one seed per module or scattering them into seed trays and pricking them out when they develop a ‘true’ leaf. I then plant out the seedlings, 15cm-23cm (6in-9in) apart, around Easter.

This first sowing is picked very young and the tender leaves are used as part of a mixed salad, never growing more than three or four inches tall. I then thin these plants to allow a few to grow larger, and make another sowing in March which will be planted outside in May and stay in the ground for nearly a year.

As with all brassicas, they do best in rich soil that is neutral to alkaline. If you have slightly acidic soil then a dressing of wood ash a week or two before planting will help, otherwise liming acidic soil is very beneficial.

Traditionally, brassicas follow legumes in the vegetable rotation, using nitrogen ‘fixed’ in the soil by the legumes, but I always add a dressing of compost to the ground before planting. They get away quicker as a result and provide an earlier harvest of tender leaves. Set each plant deep in the soil, firming it in really well. As they grow, they will become very top-heavy, so you need to make sure they have a secure base.