Flowering kale and cabbage: Too pretty to eat
You can eat flowering kales and cabbages -- also known as ornamental kalle and cabbage -- but you won鈥檛 want to. You鈥檒l want them in your garden beds and borders 鈥� or in containers 鈥� where they will continue to 鈥渂loom鈥� well into winter.
The bloom, of course, is not a flower but foliage -- a rosette of central leaves that lose their chlorophyll as the mercury drops, changing from green to white, pink, purple, and near-red.
It鈥檚 not too late to install a plant in a pot on your doorstep 鈥� flowering and love cold weather, and temperatures down to 20 degrees F or so (minus 7 degrees C). Gardeners in warm regions can grow ornamental kales and cabbages throughout winter.
Is it a cabbage or a kale?
How can you tell if a plant is a kale or cabbage? Both are Brassica oleracea var. acephala, . Both also have colorful centers. But ornamental cabbages have leaves with wavy edges, whereas the leaves of ornamental kale have ruffled or crinkled edges.
Breeders, always on the prowl for something new, continue to cross and recross the two, so that knowing which is which is nearly impossible, even for the experts.
Whether you鈥檙e growing a kale or a cabbage isn鈥檛 important, as they have similar cultural requirements (a sunny location, cool temperatures, humus-rich soil, plenty of water, and good drainage). Both are biennials, but gardeners treat them as annuals and toss them on the compost pile once the temperature .
Start from seed or plants?
You can grow ornamental kales and cabbages from seed 鈥� you need to sow in July 鈥� but a better tack for most gardeners is to buy plants, which are widely available at garden centers and nurseries in fall.
Most of these potted plants are rootbound and won鈥檛 get bigger, so choose a good-size plant, not a small one.
Ornamental kales and cabbages are a great boon when all the fall garden鈥檚 usual suspects 鈥� asters, goldenrods, Sedum 鈥楢utumn Joy鈥�, even chrysanthemums 鈥� have gone by.
And , ornamental kales and cabbage are rich in dietary fiber, Vitamins A, C, K, and B6, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and more. No flower can match that!
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Karan Davis Cutler blogs regularly at Diggin鈥� It. She's a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist and the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. To read more by Karan, click here.
