in today's episode we look at growing kale
a cool season crop that a member of
the cabbage family and a healthy leafy
green vegetable to grow in your garden
now although you can direct sow kale
seeds i recommend that you start your
seeds indoors or in these seed starting
kits the variety of kale that i'm going
to show you here is called the dwarf
blue variety of kale which is a popular variety
And I'll also show you
some of the other varieties that are available
in places like southern california you can plant kale pretty much
around the year but kale in general is
a cool season crop so it's best if you
plant them in early spring or fall if
you plant them and spring you can
harvest all through spring and summer
and if you plant them in the fall you
can harvest them right thru fall and even
in winter
now we sowed our seeds in this seed starting
kit here it's these six cells we sowed
about two seeds in each cell and the mix that
were using here for the seed starter is
a mix of peat moss, perlite and worm
castings now you can use coconut coir if
you have it instead of peat moss
but in general this is a good seed
starting mix
now in just a few weeks about four to
five weeks you will see that the plants
have germinated the seeds have germinated
and the plants have now come up
and at this stage you can start transplanting them
I'm going to be transplanting these kale
seedlings into this whiskey barrel container
you can grow a lot of these kale
plants in this whisky barrel container
and I've grown kale in whiskey barrel containers
in other regular containers
as well as in raised beds and it grows
very well no matter where you grow it
kale is an excellent plant to grow in
the home garden because there are very
few problems with growing kale and as
you'll see it produces an abundant harvest
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and as far as watering kale goes you
need to water it well during planting
and then depending on the temperatures
in your area you can follow a watering
schedule for your kale plants
now here you can see that we're growing this
kale plant in a smaller container and it
grows perfectly well for a container of
size of about five gallons you can grow
one kale plant as you can see here it
grows very well so I know a lot of folks
just use five-gallon containers and grow
one kale plant in each one of them and
that's a very good approach to growing
kale it will give you an abundant harvest
now although kale can be grown in full sun it will also grow very well and
partial sun now when we talk about
partial sun it's important to remember
that it still needs about four hours of
sunlight every day and less than four
hours of sunlight you might still be
able to get through by growing the plant
but the yield would not be that good
there are mainly two types of insects
that I've seen on kale
the first one is what you see here the
caterpillar or the looper worm and this
will chew away at your kale leaves so what I
do is I just shake the plant rigorously
just like that and any caterpillars that are there on the plants are going to fall
down and you can pick them up and you
can even hand-pick those caterpillars
they're easy to hand pick since they're
pretty big
I've also seen aphids on the kale plant
now if aphids generally show up later in
the season when it starts getting warmer
like late spring or early summer you can
see if aphids and what I usually do is if
I get aphids I just wash the plant
with a water hose I just wash it down
all the aphids go away and then I just
remove the leaves that I don't need
now let's take a look at the types of
kale that we have
curly kale is the most common kale
variety the dwarf Siberian and the dwarf
blue are common curly kale varieties and
then we have the lacinto kale which i
will be showing you in today's video
the red Russian and redbor kale are
another two varieties of kale that you
might find in your grocery store i have not
grown these two kale varieties but we'll
be doing so soon in the future so what
you're seeing here is the curly kale
variety so the common varieties are the
dwarf blue or the dwarf Siberian kale an
excellent variety to grow very delicious
as well and this is the lacinto kale
as you can see here the leaves look very
different they are a dark green and they are
flatter compared to the curly kale
variety and here you can see that once
the kale plant grows pretty large you
can get an abundant harvest from just a
few kale plants
now you don't need a lot of kale leaves unless you're eating it every
day but still the kale plant does produce
a lot of leaves
so let's look at our harvest here here
we are harvesting the curly kale
this is the dwarf Siberian or the dwarf
blue variety they are very similar varieties
great kale variety to grow now when
you're growing kale you want to make
sure that you do not harvest from the
top part of the plant you want the top
part of the plant to grow larger and not
branch out
so unlike most other vegetables that you
harvest you want your kale to grow in a
straight line producing leaves all
around it
and here is the lacinto kale being
harvested
dark green leaves flatter leaves
delicious varieties now when you're
growing organically at home you might
see a few holes in your leaves here and
there don't worry too much about it just
use the leaves that look good to you and
as long as you're handpicking your insects
and watching your plants on a
regular basis you should be able to grow
very good healthy kale leaves in your
garden without a lot of insect damage
now since kale is a leafy green you need
a fertilizer which is high in nitrogen
can use liquid fertilizers that are high in
nitrogen all-purpose fertilizers or any
fertilizer that high in nitrogen if you're
using organic fertilizers just make sure
you work it into the soil at least four
to six months before planting and that
will give you the best kale that
you've ever grown so there we have it
folks that was our episode on growing
kale I hope I've answered most of your
questions for growing kale if you have
any more questions do put them in the
comment box below and let us know your
experiences of growing kale we'll
you again soon happy gardening