Looking for Unusual Kales/ Good Soucres for Bulk Seed

[blackox]

Yesterday we were invited to our Kenyan Neighbor's house for a barbeque. The hospitality there was absolutely unbelievable and I got to try many different traditional Kenyan foods - including"Sakuma" a Kale dish (yes I had to look that up on the web). Anyway it was one of the best things that I've every eaten and I'd like to grow a Kale for my new-found Kenyan friends, for us so that we can make our own Sakuma, and for market (I remember reading that good sources for kale/kale seed are becoming scarce here yet it is remaining a popular green in some areas. Kale is easy to find in grocery stores here.)

Does anybody here know of a good source for bulk seed?

Does anybody here have seed for some of the more unusual kale varieties? (I'm in the U.S. Open to trades or could pay cash.)

[flowerweaver]

What kind of kale did your friend use in the dish? The ones I commonly see at the grocery store are Lactinato (Italian or Dinosaur), Red Russian (Ragged Jack), Curly Vates (Scotch), Siberian, and sometimes Redboor (hybrid). Chances are they used one of those.

Bavicchi, an Italian seed company, puts more seeds in their packages than most American companies for a reasonable price. I've had good luck with them. You can find their seeds at different online stores, although I've bought them from gourmetseed.com in the past. I have a little of lots of varieties that I'll be growing this season. I always let them go to seed to feed the bees in early February, so I'll be happy to share some of my kale landrace with you in 2015!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oct 16, 2014 14:15:29 GMT -5 blackox said:

Does anybody here know of a good source for bulk seed?

Around here, many of the mom and pop seed stores source their locally-worthwhile seed from Mountain Valley Seeds out of Salt Lake City. They specialize in seed that grows well in the Intermountain West. Looks like they offer 9 varieties of kale. That's a crop that is too bitter for me to eat, so I won't grow it and can't comment on the usefulness of any of the varieties. Before I started growing my own seed, Mountain Valley was my primary supplier. They are the authoritative source for the DX52-12 tomato.

[steev]

Do you wait for hard frost to "sweeten" your kale? Also it helps to braise it with onion and bacon grease, nor is a bit of apple amiss.

[kevin8715]

Oct 16, 2014 20:33:53 GMT -5 steev said:

Do you wait for hard frost to "sweeten" your kale? Also it helps to braise it with onion and bacon grease, nor is a bit of apple amiss.

I have a 2 year kale which I will start havesting in a bit. Really impressive growth but too bitter over the summer to eat.

[trixtrax]

blackox Might they have been growing a Brassica carinata kale?

[flowerweaver]

I've never found any of my kale to be bitter, but I only grow it in the fall into early spring. I don't taste a perceptible difference after a frost; it's all good. I plant it now into November, it flowers in February and I pull it after I collect seed. For me spring started kale gets eaten into lace by insects so I no longer bother.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I get two growing seasons around here: Too cold for things to grow much, and too hot/arid for cool-loving or humidity loving brassicas to not be bitter. By the time fall rolls around the kale has accumulated so much bitterness that there is no point even planting it. Same with broccoli: What a bitter nasty crop when grown in my garden!!!

I'm thinking that I'd like to grow broccoli only as a seed crop, with the intention of producing sprouting seeds. Turnip seed sure is productive around here, but it's a biennial and it's hard for me to nurse the roots through winter. Perhaps some of the choys would be appropriate sprouting-seed crops.

[steev]

Since you apparently have plenty of water to irrigate, perhaps shade is needed; maybe grow kale north of some of your corn. I forget, do you also not grow cabbage? The budding stalks of many Brassicas are choice, tender, and sweet, in Spring, before heat "bitters" them up.

On my farm, which seems similar to your conditions (though perhaps less water and longer season, less cold), Brassicas are not so palatable before colder weather, but the early Spring budding shoots are so delicious, there have to be plenty, or they don't get out of the garden. The gardener gets first grazing rights! Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the veggies; something like that. I think that's from the Queen Bob version of the book.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I irrigate once per week. In theory I could water any particular crop twice a week by planting the crop mid-way between the lines and run the lines about 3.5 days apart. I could also apply water twice a week for half as long each time. I'd water on a twice per week schedule if I lived on the farm. Commuting to a farm is becoming more of a drag the older I get. Although, I do much better at it today than I did 25 years ago. I'm much more consistent these days.

My fields are wide open, and nearly flat, and treeless, so they are in full sun from about 15 minutes after sunrise to 15 minutes before sunset. I ran some simulations... I could shade one row of brassicas beside the popcorn patch (at noon) starting about 15th August. By then the corn is tall enough, and the sun far enough to the south that the popcorn would begin to cast a mid-day shadow a row-width away from the patch. That might lead to some fall brassicas that aren't excessively bitter.

A shading technique I have tried a few times with varying rates of success is planting cool loving plants inside the popcorn patch. I gotta pre-plan for that though, and plant the popcorn far enough apart that it doesn't compete excessively with the understory crop. Perhaps planting alternating rows of brassicas and popcorn would work... The transpiration of the corn would tend to keep the brassicas a bit cooler, plus there would some amount of shade.

Cabbage grows well here if it is transplanted into the field. It tastes great. Bugs don't bother early varieties that mature before the arrival of cabbage whites. Spring rains are too unpredictable to direct seed it when it needs to be direct seeded -- before the irrigation system is active. I'm focusing more on staples these days, and cabbage-without-pesticides isn't a staple in my climate. It matures at the wrong time of the year to be stored successfully. Also, I am growing all of my own seed these days, and cabbage is one of those pesky biennials. It would take 6 years to get to the beginnings of a locally adapted landrace. (I know, I should have started 20 years ago.) I suppose that as early as the third year I'd be starting to see some improvement over the starting varieties... Several members of my family report feeling strangled after eating cabbage due to thyroid troubles. So it's not a high priority crop for me.

I return my farm to bare dirt every fall, so I don't get any spring budding brassicas. I suppose that I could find an overwintering strain of something. That seems well within the cold-tolerance limits of the brassica family. It would also allow me to work with them and save seed as an overwintering-annual instead of an honest-biennial: Collect and replant the seeds in about July. Screen for suitability in about October. Cull as appropriate. Test in situ for winter hardiness. While such a crop wouldn't be a staple, it would make a great emergency survival food... Something that is sitting there in the garden with an already established root system waiting to burst into leaf at the first signs of spring. If I actually undertake such a project, I bet I'd end up calling the result a kale...

[steev]

Yes, kale is less trouble than cabbage.

I'd think worrying about keeping the Brassicas cool would only be a consideration if you want to eat them "early-crop", as opposed to post-Winter.

I assure you, bud-shoots of Brassicas are a luxury, not just emergency survival food.

[blackox]

I'm not sure what variety of Kale they were using, "Red Russian" is what is normally available at the grocery stores here. All that I know is that they didn't grow the Kale themselves, they're not gardening here (they were using generic, store-bought cornmeal for some of their other stuff.)

trixtrax Although they don't grow their own food (they spend a lot of time flying back and forth from the U.S. and Africa)there is still a small chance that it could have been a Brassica carinata kale. I can occasionally find Texsel greens at one of the local grocery stores here. Seeing that Kenya borders Ethiopia it's possible that Sakuma is traditionally made with Brassica carinata, although it's still possible that it could be a Brassica oleracea kale (Kenya has it's colder highland areas (if I remember right) and was colonized by Europeans just like most of the rest of Africa).

Thank you Joseph and Flower for the suggested bulk seed sources. And thank you Flower for the kale seed offer, I can be patient, just let me know when.

I thought that Kale tasted like bad medicine until I tried Sakuma, they must do something to the Kale or combine it with something to take most of the bitter away.

[flowerweaver]

My belief is anyone who doesn't like kale has never had it prepared properly. Same goes for tofu. Ox, you finally found a cook that introduced you to it because they knew how to use it. Personally I don't eat it raw. My favorite recipe is to steam it briefly, just enough that it softens without losing its body, toss it with some tamari soy sauce, roasted garlic, sesame seeds, and a few red pepper flakes. For this I use lacinato or vates. Red Russian is good sauteed with potatoes or in soups or stews as you experienced. It's also fun to heat it in a skillet until it becomes crunchy or bake it into chips.