If the seed is from other sources, I don't know, but Johnny's Scarlet kale is in the cabbage family.
digitS'
Steve, I got the scarlet kale seeds from Baker Creek. It’s not a red pretty kale as I was hoping for. 
ASSETS
Here's what I have going in my favor.
YARD SIZE AND LAYOUT--We have a large, open back yard, enclosed by a 6-foot privacy fence. Our land is 100 feet across, and it's roughly 100 feet from the back fence to the back deck, from which this pic was taken:
As you may also be able to tell from the pic (taken late in the season, after I'd removed the sunflowers that I grew along the fenceline,) the yard slopes toward the back fairly significantly, a fact that I leveraged somewhat with a quickly-thrown-together rain barrel irrigation system, and will use much more extensively next year.
This year, the main portion of the garden extended 13 feet out from the fence, and went 17 feet along the fenceline you see above. Further down the fence, toward the corner, I had a 13x12ish bed of wild flowers, seeds thrown there to bring pollinators to the area. Next year I plan to make it much larger.
ABUNDANT SUNSHINE--As you view the pic above, the sun rises to the left, moves across the sky slightly toward the back of the yard, and sets to the right. Even the area a few inches on our side of the fence is in direct sunlight from roughly 7:30am-2:00pm for the entire spring and summer, and the plants farthest from it get direct sun until around 4:30 or 5.
EXCELLENT AREA FOR A COMPOST PILE--I can't dig or till in the little nook created by the storage shed and the corner of the fence, because electrical and cable TV lines run through that area. However, the hidden nature of it makes it a great location for composting. No worries about smell or eyesore back there. Behind it is a small treeline and then the golf course that you can glimpse through some breaks in the trees in the pic, so no neighbors if there's ever a smell (which there hasn't been so far.)
PLENTY OF GRASS CLIPPINGS TO COMPOST--Yeah..big yard...
LARGE RAIN BARREL--A month or two ago, I picked up a 275-gallon IBC tote, cut the top cap in the shape of a downspout adapter, elevated it 2 feet off the ground with cinder blocks, purchased a cam lock-->garden hose adapter for it, and will run drip irrigation from it next year.
THE NORTH CAROLINA EXTENSION SERVICE--They're quite the resource for home gardeners--tons of free material, including frequent highly informative classes taught by master gardeners. I've taken a couple of in-person ones and found them hugely helpful: https://guilford.ces.ncsu.edu/
Very happy for you and your family. Sounds like a great situation.So...going wayyyyyyyyy back to the second post in this thread...
...last year I just stuck some seeds in the ground after the last frost, so I didn't realize how much another aspect of my life is a HUGE asset...
I WORK FROM HOME AND RARELY TRAVEL--For the last 9 years I've been a Consultant in the technology world, and a remote employee for the last 7 1/2 of those. I am able to do the vast majority of my work remotely. In 2018, I traveled a total of 15 days, and some of those 15 were days where I flew out in the late afternoon. Point being, I'm at home nearly every day, and that has made a huge difference this year with doing all of these seeds in the greenhouse. I monitor the temperature in the greenhouse with a remote thermometer that sits on my desk, mist the seedling trays at lunchtime, take them out of the greenhouse on sunny days, put them back in when it's about to rain, etc., without impacting my work at all. In fact, when I posted yesterday that I planted 72 Johnny Jump-Ups in peat pellets, what I didn't mention is that I did it while on a conference call.
@baymule Thanks for the heads-up on this. I've already got plenty of everything for this year, but I can see myself stocking up next year from there.
Yeah, my Daddy had a vegetable garden as well and I recall helping him plant when I was probably somewhere between the ages of my daughters (5 and 9.)
Thanks!what lovely young ladies! They are beautiful.
It really is. They ride the school bus home every day and get here at 2:45pm. I try to keep 2:45-3:00pm meeting-free so I can at least greet them, but on days where I have to work with a client during that time, it's not a huge deal because the older daughter is mature enough to be trusted to fix after-school snacks for her and little sister, make sure both get started on homework, etc. My office hours are 7:30am-4:00pm with a 30-minute lunch, so I'm fully available to them if needed from 4pm on just about every day. My wife and I have talked (well, joked...) about what it would take for me to even consider taking a job where I'd have to go to an office every day, and we're thinking it'd have to be something outrageous like a 40% or better pay increase before I'd even listen.
