SUPERKALE !!

Okay so not quite the superman reference I was after but thought i'd post some pics of some of the new growth out of the beds from the plants I left in the ground over the winter unprotected. Even for the south, we have had bitterly cold temps at times (for unprotected veggies at least). Many nights in the teens and constant daily refreezing of 20's to 40's. Now I know that Kale is supposed to be hardy but I am AMAZED at just how hardy these plants are. A'la Eliot Coleman, I've noticed the regrowth kick off with the daylight now steadily growing past 10 hours per day. I would not call it a harvest but certainly food for thought as to how next approach the following winter. Some may recall my "winterizing experiment" (search term if interested) that worked well to protect the more delicate lettuces etc but leaving what was left to the elements was surely a death sentence IMHO. Oh how I was wrong !! Carrots are small but decent size with new growth just appearing. Spinach is sprouting nicely but the Chard was my biggest surprise...how did that make it through???







And this one just also shows my compost pile i've been working on. I'm using tires which is a controversial choice but i researched it and found some evidence that leaching of chemicals is not as bad as first thought. However, perhaps i could have erred on the side of caution but FREE won out.

I had a kale that I affectionately called FrankenKale last year... it was in a pot on my deck and it grew down through the very tiny space between the boards and got over 5 feet tall! It was pretty crazy The little yellow flowers were gorgeous and it was a HUGE draw for aphids, which I exterminated in soapy water.

"FrankenKale" LOL ! Much better description than superkale

I would very much like to see the 5' tall kale. WOW..... I had no idea it got that big.

Me neither! I didn't remember what I'd planted in that pot, so I wasn't really sure what it was because not only had I only grown kale once, I'd never seen it flower It was either kale or collards, the leaves didn't match either one exactly so I was never sure. I'll dig through my pictures and see if I caught it in one of the pictures of the herbs on my deck.

...

I found one! *happy dance* The garbage can that's upside down next to it is one of those tall kitchen garbage cans, just so you can get some idea of the scale.



It actually got a bit taller before it tipped over because it was top-heavy.

Wow. That actually looks a lot like my radish that bolted (though different flower color.)

Has anyone else had success overwintering Kale or other such hardy veggies?

Apologies for the pics.....garden looking dull right now. I won't keep any of the plants in the ground going for much longer. It was just an experiment to see what would happen.

No need to apologize I think that any plant growing is a success, but I'm not really about the aesthetics of gardening. Living in the country, I can get away with that

staf74 wrote:Has anyone else had success overwintering Kale or other such hardy veggies?

Apologies for the pics.....garden looking dull right now. I won't keep any of the plants in the ground going for much longer. It was just an experiment to see what would happen.

In my old row garden I routinely had plants that would come back in spring and begin growing again. Some I remember are swiss chard, turnips, onions, parsley, carrots, and parsnips. Some of those are biennials, so it's normal for them to come back the second year to go to seed. I leave parsley in the garden on purpose over winter because one can usually get a few cuttings of the old parsley to use until the new season's plantings get established. At that point I pull the old ones which will soon bolt.

It looks as though my collards might start growing again if the weather warms, but hubby plans to pull them when it thaws again so he can remix the MM in that box. Our little pasture porkers will enjoy them instead of me. (But what goes around comes around.)