Kale is primitive, but versatile and tasty

Kale is the garden vegetable that most closely resembles a wild cabbage. Through mutations that resulted in tight tufts of leaves or expansive flower buds, that wild cabbage has become such cultivated vegetables as brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and, of course, cabbage.

Of the lot, kale is the easiest to grow. Cauliflower heads need to be shaded from the sun with some sort of covering. Wait too long to harvest a cabbage, and the head splits open.

You hardly even have to pay any attention when you’re going to plant or harvest kale. Sow the seeds anytime except fall and winter, and then harvest individual leaves anytime that they are large enough to eat.

There’s no rush; the plant keeps growing new leaves whether or not you harvest.

Like its kin, kale requires no special growing conditions beyond a fertile soil enriched with an organic material such as compost.

Add enough powdered limestone to bring the soil pH to neutral or even slightly alkaline. This prevents clubroot disease and adds calcium, which kale needs and then passes on to us in its nutritious leaves.

Open up a seed catalog and you won’t find as many kale varieties as of most other vegetables. Vates has very curly, bluish leaves and is very cold hardy, Red Russian has tender, reddish leaves, and Dinosaur has bumpy, dark green leaves.

Consider setting aside some space in next year’s garden for kale. Mark your calendar to sow the seeds outdoors as soon as the soil warms, or a month earlier indoors.

If you are pressed for space, sow seeds wherever garden space becomes available, such as where you’ve cleared an early crop of bush beans, up until August. Or set transplants, started a few weeks earlier, between corn, pepper, or other plants that soon after will wane or be dug up.

If your first bite of kale does not make you a convert, try steaming it until tender, then drizzle on a sauce made from ginger, soy sauce, hot pepper, and peanut butter or toasted sesame seeds, thinned with hot water. Delicious.