Last year's kale was cut back, abandoned and ignored.
What do I know about kale?... not much! It's great for the body but we grew it mainly for it's fine structure in the garden. (Embarrassed as I now know Kale is so much more!) It's definitely a drama queen,...when the leaves are lusty and strong, you can food process them into confetti and freeze the fluff flat in a big baggie.. add them to anything you want but most especially winter soups. I didn't know our Kale would make it through this zone six, and sprout delicate new leaves, sweetened by late frost.
Another surprise was overwintering spinach. Our intention was to overwinter late sown beets...that was a bust except for one golden beet))). However, three spinach plants survived. They were growing near the beets, and obviously enjoyed the heavy winter mulch of leaves.
We are now enjoying newly seeded sprouts of herbs from the garden shed; mint is showing her aggressive but controlled face; lovely garlic and Egyptian onion add to the spring mix.
That is, the salad mix...)). Our very first of the season and it was delicious and dare I say, healthy! Oh YA! I don't think we will ever have a garden without Kale from now on.
Another first...we saw an osprey today......they make such a fuss...."look at me"..."did you miss me"..."I'm here!" "I'm here!"
Maybe the blue herons are not far behind)))
I'm impressed by your overwintering collection, Brenda. Seriously impressed!
ReplyDeleteBlush))).. Thank you Jodi. I should have mentioned the Kale was Thompson and Morgan "Scarlet". We grew the Black Tuscan Kale (Cavalo nero)also but it didn't overwinter. We liked the flavor of the mature and immature Scarlet better than the Black.
ReplyDeleteYour first salad, gosh we'd have to shovel the snow away to get to our garden.. It want from a lovely +10 to +2 in about 30 minutes here...DSH
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