We love our tree collards.
They're very nutritious and we enjoy them in a wide variety of dishes.
If you live in zone seven or eight through ten,
you can easily grow them as perennials, but we grow them here in zone five too.
Today I'll show you how we grow tree collards as annuals by propagating them
and how we overwinter them under double cover.
I'll start by showing you how I grow tree collards as annuals
by propagating them with cuttings.
I'll use cuttings from this plant but first I need to remove most of leaves.
Tree collards can be a little bit tough,
so when we eat them raw, we usually dice them finely
and mix them in with a variety of more tender greens
and eat them in salads.
More often than not, though, we cook our tree collards.
In fact, the only cooking video I've ever done
is on how to prepare tree collards, or collards in general,
using an African collard green recipe.
Okay, I've removed almost all of the leaves from the plant and we'll be enjoying those for dinner.
Now let's take our cuttings.
Okay, you'll see right here that I left a little bit of leaf at the end of this one.
In my experience, the cuttings they have a small leaf on them will tend to propagate better.
So, want to do when I cut the cuttings
is I want to make sure I have at least six of these nodes on each cutting.
So, these are where the leaves were cut off,
and the nodes that are buried underground will develop roots
and the nodes above ground, hopefully, will develop leaves.
So, I want six - at least six - on each, so let's see what we have here.
So, we've got a few right up at the top.
One here, one here.
I think that's a good length for a cutting.
I've probably got eight or nine on this one.
And there's our first cutting.
Okay, I continue to work my way down the plant looking for at least six nodes on each cutting.
I also want the length of the cutting to be about six to eight inches long.
That way it fits well into a pot.
I'm actually gonna go a bit longer on this one
and cut right here.
There's our second cutting.
I'll continue taking cuttings in this manner until I have a dozen cuttings.
That just happens to be the number of pots I have set up today with potting soil.
So, I'll continue on here and I'll get back to you when I'm done.
Well, I've got my 12 cuttings and my next step is to plant them in the pots that I have over here,
but before doing that I want to point something out that I forgot to show you earlier.
Hopefully, you can see down here towards the bottom of the plant
that it's very woody - almost like a little tree.
And the reason I'm pointing this out is that cuttings from parts that are woody like this won't propagate as well
as cuttings from green parts of the plant.
So, I focus on taking most of my cuttings from the top of the plant where it's nice and green.
Okay, now let's grab our cuttings and we'll plant them in our pots.
The potting mix I'm using is five parts coco coir, four parts vermiculite,
and three parts worm castings from our worm bins.
We find that we get about a 66% successful propagation rate using this potting mix.
And, again, when I plant these,
I want to make sure that I have at least three of the nodes underground.
Now, this one happens to have a leaf on top so I know which end is up.
But if I didn't have a leaf on top,
it's still very important to plant it so that it's upright.
And the way you can tell when it's upright
is that the node will have a little V shape,
and the V will point down.
Or you can see it as a little heart with the bottom of the heart pointing down.
Our tree collards sometimes go to seed,
but the seeds may not breed true so it's best to propagate them using cuttings.
After planting all the cuttings,
I'll place the tree collards in a south-facing window in the house
and I'll keep them watered.
Over the winter, the nodes under the soil will develop roots
and the nodes above the soil will grow new leaves.
I'll transplant the plants into the garden next April, around our last frost.
Okay, I've planted all of my tree collard cuttings and they're ready to go inside,
but before doing that let's go back to the hoop house
to talk about how I overwinter tree collards under double cover here in zone five.
We grow a number of frost tolerant crops all winter long under double cover.
The double cover is provided by cold frames and low tunnels inside our hoop house.
We first overwintered our tree collards two winters ago and they did remarkably well.
We planted the tree collards months before our first frost.
They overwintered just fine and in the spring they really took off.
The plants grew so tall that I had to cut them back significantly to keep them here in the hoop house.
So, I cut them way back and then I tried overwintering them again last winter.
Unfortunately, the plants didn't survive last winter.
I'm not sure if it was because I cut them back so much and tried to overwinter them again
or that it was just that last winter was a bit colder.
So, we're going to continue our experiment with overwintering tree collards here again this winter.
Here in the corner of this cold frame,
you can see one of the many tree collard plants that I planted out here a couple months ago.
The cabbage worms have been giving these plants a hard time,
but soon it will be cold enough that they'll die back.
My hope is that these tree collards will do as well as the ones that we overwintered a couple winters ago
and continue to produce for us well into the spring and summer.
Well, it's time to get these plants inside.
If you'd like to try growing tree collards,
please see the description for a link to where we got our original cuttings.
And if you'd like to learn more about growing tree collards, please see this link.
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