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Helen Chesnut's Garden Notes: Kale's bounty lasted 7 months

Kale makes way for new plantings

It was with immense regret that I cut down my six giant kale plants. They had provided me with fresh, young greens for about seven months, with brief non-productive intervals during winter’s coldest periods.

I always try to leave kale in its late spring flowering stage in the garden for as long as possible, to nourish the bees. Eventually, though, the space occupied by the kale is needed for other plantings.

Kale is a wonderfully productive, easily grown and highly nutritious green vegetable that winds up its season with succulent little flowerbud bundles like miniature broccoli florets. They are tasty in salads and stir-fries, or simply steamed and served with butter and salt.

Fortunately, replacement vegetables for the kale were already producing by the time the last of the kale plants were removed. Miniature butterhead lettuces and a red romaine were providing salad greens while the reliable “broccolini” called Aspabroc, a summer sprouting broccoli that produces masses of miniature florets over many weeks, had begun to yield its tasty morsels.

I start the seeds indoors in late winter for early spring transplanting, and again in the third week in June for a second crop in late summer and autumn. I’ve even had Aspabroc plants winter over in the garden to continue producing welcome greens. West Coast Seeds lists Aspabroc.

Colourful potatoes. In a conversation this spring, my son told me about his latest culinary adventure into lightly steaming or stir-frying kale or spinach and chopping it fine into mashed potatoes. On his visit over the Victoria Day weekend, I honed his dish by mashing regular potatoes and sweet potatoes together and then adding cooked greens.

I still make the dish often, now using the steamed, chopped Aspabroc florets from the garden. Steamed sweet potato adds nutritional value, colour and flavour to the dish.

Shear delight. An “up” side to the kale removal was the copious amount of greenery the plans provided to feed and activate the building compost heaps.

My longstanding method for handling large masses of greenery destined to be composted has been to chop them up roughly into a trug or pail for trundling to a heap. For this chopping, I used my hand pruners.

Enter gardening friend Laurel, who introduced me to her long-handled garden shears. She uses them to chop lengths of green growth into fine pieces while they are still in a trug or other receptacle for compostables. The smaller pieces produced by the shears reduces the bulk and leads to speedier decomposition in a heap.

I ordered the same shears from Lee Valley Tools and am continuing to find new uses for them, such as slicing away errant growth on rambler roses and trimming off faded bloom from winter heathers. They made short work of reducing the kale plants to a tidy heap of finely cut greenery.

The shears’ light weight, the long handles and very sharp blades make easy work of trimming and allow for precise cuts.

Anticipation in black. Of all the outdoor seedings I’ve made this spring, the one whose germination I anticipated most eagerly was Black Coco bean from Salt Spring Seeds. I tried to order the seeds last spring, to find it was sold out. This spring I made sure to order early.

The long, pathside row of Black Coco germinated brilliantly. As they develop, I’ll be using short stakes to keep the knee-high plants upright and the pods lifted up.

Black Coco is an all-purpose bean, good as an early snap bean, a shelling bean while the beans in the pods remain immature, and a dry bean. I’ll be harvesting mine in late summer as a dry bean, described as being cocoa-flavoured.

GARDEN EVENTS

Qualicum meeting. The Qualicum Beach Garden Club will meet on Tuesday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the QB Civic Centre, 747 Jones St. Linda Derkach will speak about how home gardeners can help offset the effects of climate change in “Hotter, Drier, Wetter: Garden Sense for a Changing Climate.” qualicumbeachgardenclub.ca.

Plant sales. The Friends of Government House Gardens Society have opened the Plant Nursery, across from the Tea Room at Government House, 1401 Rockland Ave. in Victoria, from Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Most of the plants will be sold for $8, payable by debit or credit cards only.

hchesnut@bcsupernet.com