How To Grow Kale From Seed, How To Grow Cavolo Nero From Seed, Growing Kale, Vegetable Gardening
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Welcome morning everyone here from DIY home gardening 6th of January come up to the allotment have a little look around see what damage there is from the storm um and uh well here I am perched in front of what I considered to be one of the best crops to
Grow so if I turn the camera around and we can have a little look I just thought I’d show you so that’s my um Brassica cage which as you can see is going to be really good this year and this is the Brassica bed that it was once covering so we got the
Purple Sprout and broccoli which you know is purple Sprout and broccoli don’t think I’ll be growing it again anymore uh I had the Brussels down the far end I got a bit of chard and whatnot but I’m here to look at this crop now this is
Kale and I know what you’re thinking it looks nothing like the kale that you get in the supermarket because the kale that generally you get in the supermarket is that Curly kale the stuff with leaves a little bit look like that or much tighter now this is actually black kale
Or as it’s normally sold cavlo Nero or black Tuscany black tuskan kale uh basically the Italians use it quite a lot and it is a lovely dark crisp kale you know a lot of just said it’s and I was going to say taste test as well absolutely bloody amazing um like I
Say six of January we’ve had storms you can see this is where the uh Raska cage was rested they’ve been blown over we’ve had minus 5 already not too harsh really um we’ve yeah had a hell of a lot of rain and as you can see let me just
Give give the Jacobs A Bit of Swiss chard I love it um yeah you can see how wet it is and yet this uh kale just goes on and on and on and uh I picked the big leaves off these few plants here uh we pick those
For Christmas and so you can see that the others have still got their big foliage on and you know the difference that um well how I do it differently is that quite often you’ll see that people grow kale they let cavalo or whatever get to
This sort of size then they just cut the whole plant down down and game over you have to do repeat sewings I don’t as I’m using it we literally pick the leaves off it from the bottom working your way up now what you tend to find is in the
Summer months you’ll get a bit of white fly on it this time of year it’s nice and clean the older stuff not the best you know just uh whip that off as it gets a bit Tatty or you don’t want to use it if you got sheep give it to the
Sheep because sheep AB absolutely love it very high in calcium content and good iron content so also applicable for humans uh and so yeah as I say we work our way up the stems clearing the stems as we go and it is such a good
Crop uh use it like normal kale so you can just boil the H out of it um and use it with your normal veg you can mix it in different things you know different stews or as part of a soup but uh what works really well my boys love it is you
Can put it in the oven or in a dehydrator or um what’ you call them the old Ninja things um put put it in there and dry it off and then it becomes crispy kale so you could use it on your stir fry or as my
Boys do they just literally eat it out the bat nice healthy snack so why bother oh excuse me choking on that bit of kale why bother doing a video on Kale well basically for all those reasons it’s a bloody good vegetable to grow or leafy crop to grow now
These well they went in into this bed in the April period And so they’ve been growing happily and we’ve been picking this since May now we’re into January now so you know 7 months 8 months potentially of pick well 7 months of picking and we’ll keep this in and you can really
You could keep this as almost a perennial crop now we will keep this in here or I’ll keep this in here until the new new plants are ready and that’s really why we’re starting this video now because January is when I start same as
Seed so uh when we get to go back home we can set the camera up and I’ll show you how to soda seed nice and simple and then yeah follow the same timeline to get us some lovely plants over the autumn and winter so I may have spent longer at the
Allotment than planned because it’s now4 4 and I thought I’d just show you how tough kale are so they are just s of bug standards curly cow if you like uh sewed the seed on those back end of November and so they’ve been quite happyish uh in there which is just Cold
Frame not heated at all so um yeah really are quite tough so let’s get in the greenhouse and then can have a look at say the normal kale that I’m sewing um I have already filled these sea Tres and given them a drink so they had
A a bit of water on them well actually compost went in uh I just tend to use another SE tray to slightly press down so you get your little divots there give the traser a water or give the compost a water let it soak for about half an hour
So then it’s not going to be puddling and you’re not going to well cause the seat to rot uh prematurely um and brought it into the greenhouse to get it up to temperature now this is a new compost to me not used it before and like a lot of these new
Peete free type mixes there’s elements of bark in there this has got well some chunky bits in in there which I have tried to pull out but nevertheless you can see these odd bits of um bark or skin of bark you know the outer cambium l so there’s my sea
Trees ready and obviously to make use of it um got a few other seeds that I thought I’d put in at the same time so these are actually the ones from the allotment so this is the Black Tusk um which is the cavalon hero type so they will be getting sewn these those
Particular ones DT Brown got those last year new to me this year uh is this orac which is um or oric Scarlet Emperor which is um meant to be quite Hardy tall growing and very much like a spinach so I’m going to stick that in the SE try at
The same time so I just thought I’d show you that and then I bought this as well so this kale red Russian uh it’s a a taller grain variety again it’s going to get similar height to that black Tuscany so about 2 and 1/2 3T in height and the thing that appealed
To me on this is Clues I guess in the name is that the foliage and the stems turn red um or S purple red especially when you get to the the Autumn winter time when you get the cold on it so that’s really why fancy growing that just something a little bit
Different so uh I’ll end up with obviously seing the two types of kale plus the curly kale that I’ve just shown you so that it can be my three types and it will mean that for next season uh spring essentially I do the planting out in the April time
Uh the curly cow will be ready first and then we’ll be able to then start harvesting the black Tuscany type from uh May onwards um through to probably the the April May of The Following season and the red Russian no idea to be honest um but I’m
Hoping well let’s see not tell me uh yeah doesn’t say anything I have to look in the the catalog as to when that’s ready but I imagine it’s going to be similar sort of time if you leave it to do its thing so um as always my first job is
Going to be to write some labels out so let me get that done first right got the labels written out so we start on the kale black Tuscany now kale seeds aren’t actually too bad like quite quite like them for sewing some people use a seed sewer but
I I must admit I still tend to use it by hand now with these you’ll notice that these are cell trays you can get them in different sizes let me just grab different one so these are classes of 40 because they’re in blocks of 10 this one
Here that’s 24 and then I’ve got some larger which are a 12 uh kale doesn’t really need that much space in terms of how it Roots uh and I quite like using these trays because it means that actually I can kind of work out how many I’m going
To do and if you know this the size plot that you’ve got then you can work out what your spacings are going to be you know if you’re thinking like your say with mine my alotment bed 1.2 M so then that would give me three plants
Spaced out across there so then you then can determine how many rows you want to do so I’m thinking that I’m going to do um five rows so that’ll give me 15 plants so for this purpose I’m going to do that as a block now let’s get some seed out so it’s
Quite a nice seed um I don’t know whether you can see that totally without it falling off let’s have a look there we are so it’s a rounded seed and it’s quite simple for picking out now you can actually get one seed at a time but what I tend to do is
Because seed is I think relatively cheap uh I tend to do a multi- sewing so with something like a kale I will do three seeds per cell and I will then wait for well wait for them to germinate certainly wait for them to get a reasonable
Size and then I will then snip off or pull out depending on the type of plant um two of the uh two of the seedlings and just keep the strongest one and there are some things that actually do much better when they’re multi-one any way things like beetro for
Example but um I say I I do tend to do it multi- just because so seed’s relatively cheap and it does mean that by filling all 15 of those you’re guaranteed that at least one of those seeds is going to germinate hopefully all three and so then you know
That you’ve got 15 viable plants which is what I need rather than the method that a lot of people do which is uh put singular seeds in each one and then if you’ve got some failures well then you’re a bit stuffed to be honest means that you then got to
Fill another SE tray and get your propagation done all over again just to get your right numbers and obviously then you’re playing catch up a little bit um also you know there are still loads and loads of people that uh SE fill a um find one something like that
Sort of sea tray and then wait for the SE to germinate and prick them out into individual trays or pots nothing wrong with that at all I just find for myself this way works much better these cell cell trays fit into the propagator quite easily and being in this cell tray to
Start with then means I don’t have to worry about bricking the plants out just to go into some cell trays so on top of the seeds we then got this vermiculite which if you’ve seen other videos of mine you’ll know that I always use it it’s a
Uh byproduct used to be a volcanic by product but is manmade now most of the time under heat most of it’s actually made in Germany and then exported all over the around around the world um how it works is it helps to cut out the light levels to the seed it allows them
Also somewhere to sort of root into and as it breaks down it releases these macronutrients which are really good um so that’s the um Black Tusk and Dam and covered over what I’d normally do then is spray this with water or spray that with water reason being is
That you want to keep the vermiculite nice and moist uh without drying the seeds out because in that way they’re going to germinate much easier so let me just get these um other seeds done and then I’ll show you where they go okay so that’s the kale done they’re
Sewn sewn a couple of other bit so sewed the OC um oric and the onion as well all covered over vermiculite spr spray down with the water so you’ll see how let me grab some oh it’s turned from this pale color to sort of that golden orangey yellow color and so you
Know that the moisture is locked in there and now careful bit is well actually I need to take the cover off the propagator we’re just going to pop it into a propagator to uh well allow the propagator to do its thing okay take two really so just carefully shouldn’t really do it
One-handed cuz that’s how accidents happen but heated propagator and pop it in there and just get the lid on there we are lid on make sure you cut your close your vents and well with any luck the uh the seeds will germinate and be up within about a
Week to 2 weeks so let’s see what happens and that’s that that’s how to well how to sew kale seeds it’s not really difficult but I think the more important thing is uh to show you obviously the ones that are back there at the alotment just to show you how how
Good that crop can be and how worthwhile it is and say why I’m growing it so um yeah seeds are nice and simple plants are nice and easy to grow there’s kind of nothing to not like about it if you got any questions as to how I do things
Or why um or indeed why I like the kale so much then please send me a message always good to hear from you if you like what I’m doing please subscribe to the channel don’t forget hit that reminder button so you don’t miss out in the
Future videos I’m doing and I always say it but it’s so true enjoy what you’re doing have fun and as you have also seen in a SE try something different you know kale is not necessarily just kale so till next time bye for [Applause] Now [Applause] N