The secret of health for both mind and
body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to
anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” ~Siddhartha Gautamav
First and foremost I want to thank all of you who still have my blog feed coming to you. I’ve been absent for many months and so appreciate you for hanging in there, waiting for me to get my stuff together and resume writing. Thank you so much.
First and foremost I want to thank all of you who still have my blog feed coming to you. I’ve been absent for many months and so appreciate you for hanging in there, waiting for me to get my stuff together and resume writing. Thank you so much.
It has been an interesting year since my last post;
filled with sorrow and emotional soul searching while settling dad’s estate and
clearing my parents’ house to prepare it for sale. However, peppered amongst
all that was much joy and new beginnings for me.
I went back to work, this time at a nursery, doing
what I love most…working with plants, helping people with their gardens and
spending lots of time with people who love gardening like me. Thus far it’s the
most rewarding job I think I’ve ever had.
In late August, one of my customers came in
specifically to buy collard seeds. I remembered her as I’d helped her a few
times throughout the summer but hadn’t really got to know who she is as a
gardener. Turns out she is a weight trainer, and we got to talking about
growing greens for a healthy diet. I’d sold lots of collard plant starts in the
spring and knew it was very popular in Southern USA
cooking. Now, I love greens… kale, beets, mustards, chard, etc but many greens
contain oxalic acid which is fine for some folks but not for those concerned with
calcium issues. I had never eaten collard greens nor paid much attention to
them. So as she was extolling all the virtues of collard greens I asked her if
she knew if it was high or low in oxalic acid. She didn’t know so I made a
mental note to do research on it when I got home. Then she gave me one tidbit
that sold me on growing collards myself. That it grows all winter in our
climate, which means you can have fresh greens all winter and even snowfall
doesn’t faze it. She said you simply knock off the snow, pick the leaves and
cook them up. Wow, I want to grow some of that! I did some research and found
them to be low in oxalic acid. Then I bought a bunch from my green grocer to
try them. Yum! So I bought some seeds and got a few starts going. Today I have
about 8 plants in various sunny places around the perennial garden to see which
locations are best.
Collards are cool weather plants. They are best
grown in spring and fall, like spinach and some kales. I say some kales
because I grew a new (new to me) variety of kale this year that wasn’t fazed by
hot days in the 90’s F (32+C). But that’s fodder for another post. Today we’re
talking collards. Collards can grow between 40-75F (5-23C) with optimum growing
temps of 60-65F (16-19C) degrees, and as with many fall weather crops they
taste sweeter after a frost. They are packed full of vitamins and minerals and
rich in carotenoids. Naturally, as with many greens, they are high in vitamin K
so if you have blood disorders they may not be right for you.
Collards are from the Brassica family therefore the cabbage
moth is something to guard against. The minute mine were in the ground that
little white rascal of a moth was flitting around laying her eggs on the
undersides of the leaves. We still had warm, sunny days at planting time and
the moths were persistent, so I mixed up some BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis) in my
1 gallon sprayer. BT is an organic pesticide that is used to kill leaf eating larvae
and caterpillars. It degrades in the sunlight so spray it in the evening hours
and re-apply every few days or once weekly, depending on your level of pest
control needed. That’s why I mix it up in a gallon sprayer. I just keep it
mixed and use the gallon over a period of several weeks. It makes it easy to do
a quick spray when I get home from work or after dinner. Frankly the cabbage
moths were making a mess of my kale too so every few days I’d spray the whole
lot, concentrating on the underneath of the leaves. And I’ll say this about the collards…the
cabbage moths seemed to like the kale more than the collards. Way more egg
laying going on with the kale. Now that the weather has turned cold and wet,
the moths are gone, so the spray isn’t needed any more.
Fertilize with a high nitrogen fertilizer like seaweed
extract organic liquid or a fish fertilizer since it’s the leaves you want and
not flowers. I’m excited to see the plants getting bigger. And it is
interesting to see which locations are growing bigger plants. Do you ever do
that? Plant veggies in more than one location throughout your perennial garden
areas? I’ve often done that when my veggie space fills up and am surprised to
see some grow better where I least expected them to.
As far as cooking collards, I’ve seen many recipes
and only a few ways to cook them. Thus far I have only chopped the de-stemmed
leaves and sautéed them in olive oil and spices, just like I do kale greens. Quite
delicious I must say. The flavor is hard to describe but for sure nothing like kale.
Collard greens have an earthy flavor to me.
Our winter is forecasted to be warmer and drier than
normal so I may not get the fun of knocking off the snow before I harvest them
but I can’t wait to cook my fresh winter harvest.
Since I’m new to this beautiful green I’d love any
and all thoughts on cooking and even your favorite recipe if you care to share.
Thanks ever so much for reading!
In Bloom In My Garden Today: Agastache
foeniculum (anise hyssop),
Alyssum, Cyclamen hederifolium
(fall),Daisy(white double,) Daphne caucasica, Echinacea, Eupatorium rugosum
‘chocolate’ (joe pye weed), Fuchsia, Heath (Erica carnea ‘springwood white’), Kirengeshoma palmata, Nepeta, Rose, old English ‘reine des violettes’, Salvia
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