This was probably the discovery of the year 2008: curly kale. I had never cooked it or grown it before and the idea came about when I watched a television cooking programme.
Curly Kale Seeds
It has always been a bit of a challenge for me to grow vegetables from the brassica family (i.e. any cabbage related plant) since wild rabbits regularly devour them. And my cabbages have also suffered greatly from the white butterfly caterpillar.
I seem to remember that it was Jamie Oliver who suggested cooking curly kale in a very simple way by blanching it and then frying it in olive oil with garlic and chilies. Now the taste is absolutely superb, it has a fresh mineral flavour and it accompanies any other vegetable such as potatoes really well. It’s really worth growing!
Since then, I have bought curly kale from supermarket but the taste is not as good as the home-grown one.
This year I plan to try the Tavola Nero kale since other chefs have recommended its great taste too.
If you have any tips that you would like to share for growing cabbages successfully I would love to hear from you.
We also had problems with our brassicas last year, lots of cabbage whites about, we were over run with caterpillars. Being vegan I cannot kill them, so this year we netted the brassicas and just moved the nets up the canes as the cabbages grew. We still had a few butterflys get under the net, but nowhere near as many as last year and the cabbages have done really well. Our main problem is slugs and snails, they ate a whole row of lettuces 2 weeks ago!