Growing vegetables in their garden, summer residents tend to get a vitamin, environmentally friendly harvest. Especially popular is cabbage, a little less common in the beds of cauliflower color.
But, taking care of their health, gardeners completely forget about Kale. But this vegetable culture, despite its name, can develop well in our area and besides a hundred times ahead of their cabbage “relatives” in the content of nutrients.
Plant description
Kale belongs to the family Cruciferae and is often hidden under other names. But unlike its cabbage “sisters”, this kind of head does not form, but gives its harvest in the form of incredibly beautiful curly leaves.
Depending on the type of feces can be a lush leaf rosette or develop in the form of spectacular “palm”, sometimes reaching a height of 1 m. it would Seem that such a beauty, which can be dressed in bright green, gray-green, dark red or purple robes, the place in the flower garden, because it can give odds to many decorative cultures.
But this culture is valued not only for the spectacular outfit. Perhaps the most important advantage is its incredibly rich chemical composition of juicy curly leaves, which when used in food saturate the body with a variety of vitamins, minerals and biologically active compounds.
Useful property
This Kale is one of the first products of plant origin in terms of the number of proteins and can be an excellent alternative to meat. In addition, it contains 25 vital amino acids, and the content of omega-3 fatty acid in its leaves is equal to the amount of this substance in fish products.
A glass of freshly prepared smoothie or a plate of lettuce from the leaves of bruncoli will be enough to cover the body’s daily need for vitamin a, valuable vitamins of group b, PP, C, K, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and selenium, as well as lutein and zeaxanthin.
We should also mention the calcium, which in the leaves of curly cabbage contains as much as in dairy products. And this despite the fact that in 100 g of Kale is only 50 calories — it is simply irreplaceable in the diet.
To get the maximum benefit from eating curly cabbage, its leaves should first be used fresh. Also, the leaves of feces can be added to soups, vegetable stews, prepare them light side dishes for meat and fish, fillings for pies, harvested for the winter. As they say, there would be a fantasy and desire to include in the diet of this dietary and healthy product.
From some gardeners you can hear unflattering reviews about the taste of feces. Its overripe leaves are really coarse and become tasteless, so the harvest should be carried out in a timely manner. Young leaves of this plant have a very delicate texture and are devoid of astringency and bitterness, which are characteristic of old leaves.
But this bitterness is easy to get rid of, if before eating the leaves of feces placed for a while in the freezer. The same effect will happen right in the garden after the plant falls under the first autumn frosts.
Cultivation
Growing feces is no different from growing the usual cabbage for us. But if the latter we planted exclusively in the garden, to brocoli it is possible to allocate a place even in the flower garden – so beautiful this plant throughout the summer season. Curly leaves of feces will look spectacular as next to other flower crops, and in splendid isolation, especially if you plant a number of multi-colored varieties.
An important feature of curly cabbage is its amazing cold resistance. Plants can withstand frosts up to -18°C, without losing any decorative leaves or their useful properties. Moreover, under the influence of low temperatures, the leaves of feces acquire a more saturated color and a pleasant sweet taste.
Landing
Calais does not like transplanting, so the seeds are better to sow in the garden under the film cover in the middle or end of April, and then thin out the shoots. If it is not possible to go to the country in these terms, the curly cabbage is sown on seedlings at the end of March or the first decade of April.
For this purpose, it is better to use seedling cassettes, the cells of which are filled with a light fertile substrate, poured with warm water and each spread 2-3 pre-soaked seeds, sinking them to 1 cm.After the emergence of shoots in each cell, one should leave the strongest sprout.
Care of seedlings is carried out according to the usual principle: regular watering, supplementary lighting of seedlings with daylight lamps, feeding and maintaining the temperature in the room is not higher than +16…+18°C. the Seedlings of feces should be watered moderately, without waterlogging the soil, otherwise it is possible to defeat the seedlings with a black leg.
For dressing you can use any complex organomineral products which are used according to instructions. To the kids is well developed, they need to fertilize twice after 12-14 days after emergence and repeat the procedure in a couple weeks.
Hardened seedlings are planted in the open ground at the onset of favorable weather conditions. The bed is placed in a Sunny place and pre-fertilized with humus and mineral fertilizers (2/3 buckets of humus and 1 tablespoon of azofoski per m²). If the soil on the site is acidic, under the digging additionally make wood ash (up to 0.5 kg per m²). On heavy clay soils, in addition, you need to make half a bucket of rotted sawdust for each m² of the bed.
Soil ball of each seedling gently extruded from the cells and transferred to wells that are placed on a bed with an interval of 30-40 cm Calais to bury the lower leaves, around the stems of compacted soil, and abundantly shed, the wells separated by water.
To be continued. Read it in Kale: the Beauty and Use in the Garden (Part 2).
Leave a Reply