A Seed Saver's Garden

[digitS']

it's 'kale' which usually causes the person to get a blank look, lol.

Our even dozen kale plants look quite a bit different right now because of continuous harvesting. I didn't think to do that before DW came along. But then, I was not a kale fan in any of that time and only grew them once, that I remember. That year, the huge plants were allowed to grow unharvested until Winter.

DW picked some more leaves off the current scrawny plants, yesterday. They do become more tender with frost. What does dehydrating do to the leaves? I can imagine two results: #1 they become like shoe leather, or #2 they are crispy things like potato chips.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

Our even dozen kale plants look quite a bit different right now because of continuous harvesting. I didn't think to do that before DW came along. But then, I was not a kale fan in any of that time and only grew them once, that I remember. That year, the huge plants were allowed to grow unharvested until Winter.

DW picked some more leaves off the current scrawny plants, yesterday. They do become more tender with frost. What does dehydrating do to the leaves? I can imagine two results: #1 they become like shoe leather, or #2 they are crispy things like potato chips.

Steve

Apparently, #2. She said she eats them like potato chips. Personally, I think I'd like kale chips but hard to imagine them without a bit of oil and salt, I don't think you could do it like that in a dehydrator though. That method is probably oven only.

I grew too many kale for sure. So far I've mostly harvested only from the backyard plants and even some of them remain huge. I do like that you can continue to harvest with a foot of snow on the ground, so there's that. Just something about a big ole kale plant jutting out of the snow warms my heart. And last winter I developed a wierd addiction to eating the tiny crown bits with little icicles embedded in them while standing outside. The mix of ice and greens hits just right. But I have a bit of pagophagia.