The Best Kales
(Page 2 of 6)
THE TALE OF TWO KALES
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Kale thrives in cold weather and has a venerable history of
nourishing people in the cold, dark months of the year,
when few other green vegetables are to be had. The most
common kale, the so-called Scotch or Scotch Curled
(Brassica oleracea, Acephala group), is a
primitive cabbage.
The other kind of kale, the Siberian or Napus type
(Brassica napus) , actually is more closely
related to rutabagas. With its tender leaves, it has become
popular in recent years as an ingredient in many of the
imaginative salad mixes being grown by home gardeners and
market farmers. Thanks to the introduction of new colors
and forms in the last few years, an excellent selection of
both the Scotch Curled and Napus types are available
commercially.
Kale is most often grown north of the Mason-Dixon Line;
Scotch kale's botanical sister, collards, fills the same
dietary niche in the South. This is due, in part, to the
fact that collards taste better than kale in warm Southern
summers. In fact, both greens benefit from cold
temperatures that turn starches to sugars in their stems
and leaves; with kale, the kind of cold that seems to
really transport it from mediocre to divine is several
nights of 20-degree temperatures. That means it can be a
great winter crop for the South, where a few frosty nights
can bring out its flavor peak by midwinter.
Over the years I've heard many claims as to just how cold
hardy kale can be. To find out which kale could best stand
up to the vagaries of short fall days and cold conditions,
I enlisted the help of several kale connoisseurs from
across the country: gardener and photographer David
Cavagnaro in Decorah, Iowa; plant breeder and seed grower
Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed in Philomath, Oregon; and
Micaela Colley, farm manager at Seeds of Change in Santa
Fe, New Mexico. We also had a test site for a cold showdown
in Maine, where kale often can be counted on until
Christmas, but an early, very cold fall laid the crop to
waste before we could get any results.
To find which varieties we could rely on for flavor,
productivity and cold-hardiness in our respective parts of
the country, we selected eight to test — five Scotch
Curled and three Napus types, all held in high regard by
kale lovers. The Scotch Curled types included a couple of
reliable old workhorses, 'Vates Blue' (sometimes listed as
'Dwarf Blue Vates') and 'Winterbor,' as well as two
varieties relatively new to the U.S. gardening scene: the
striking, bright-red 'Redbor' hybrid and the Italian
heirloom 'Lacinato' For 'Lacinato' (sometimes called black
kale because the leaves are such a dark green), we used an
Americanized selection and its Italian counterpart, 'Nero
Di Toscana.' From the Napus group, we tried the beautiful
'White Russian,' 'Red Ursa' and the feisty, cold-hardy
'Winter Red,' which was reported to be more resistant to
cold than its progenitor, 'Russian Red.'
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