By Janet Sellers
Kale will rise again.
For years I did not eat kale because I didn’t know anything about it, but after I tried it both as young plant leaves and full mature leaves, I decided it was one of my favorite vegetables ever, not to mention it has amazing health benefits. Packed with superfood amounts of vitamins, minerals and plant compounds, we can eat it (and our dogs might like it, too!) in salad, steamed, stir-fried, in green smoothies, and even baked as kale chips. Fair warning, kale chips are so yummy and easy to make (just oil lightly and toast in the oven for 5-10 minutes) you may need a couple of bunches to make a batch—they go down easy and disappear quickly. Potato chips seem heavy and dull by comparison.
At the Tri-Lakes Cares food garden, protected from deer by the tall fence, we left our kale plants to overwinter sort of by accident due to an early snow last fall, but they came back in great shape in April, and we got three crops from them by the end of June. We just cut the leaves from the lower parts of the plant and the plants kept growing till 5 or 6 feet high for all of them, offering a very long harvest. We did the same with the lettuce. Then we let the plants flower and go to seed. Lots of seeds fell and they’re regrowing now. We’ll have plants for this fall season and for next year. We plan to leave the newer plants to overwinter making strong roots. The plants will then come back and grow again for us in late spring next year. It’s also possible that we could have them last for a few seasons. Some people can keep their kale plants for three years or more as long as they’re cut back and the roots are protected over the winter. It seems to work very well.
Many leafy greens and plants can be simple “cut and come again” food crops in the garden or in pots. “Zombie” plants can regrow in soil, such as lettuces and similar foods sold with root ends intact including scallions, celery, kale, bok choy, chard, herbs, and more. Even onion roots will sprout tasty leaves. Many herbs thrive with careful pruning, and we can propagate or eat the cuttings. Broccoli will sprout side shoots after the first top harvest. Broccoli, kale, and the brassicas originated from mustard greens, carefully tended over the centuries and bred to enhance the plant for nutrition, locale, and so on. We used to grow these in our kitchen window in a baking pan for transplanting, but in winter we can just harvest from the windowsill when they get big enough.
Letting our locally growing plants go to seed in fall can offer some good seeds that are hardy for our area for the next year.
Janet Sellers is an avid “lazy gardener” using deep mulch to spare watering and keep out weeds in the Back to Eden garden scheme. Your garden tips are very welcome; please send them to JanetSellers@ocn.me.
Other Gardening articles
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – Rooting out crime: How our community’s flowers protect more than just plants (2/4/2026)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – Mini outdoor greenhouses, cinnamon to protect soil and seedlings (12/31/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – Festive stuff: winter beauty outdoors, indoors, and holiday acorn bread (12/4/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – November tips, paper-bagging geraniums, compost poles (10/30/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – Cornmeal in the garden; sweet potato leaf greens (10/1/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens (HANG) – Fall and the forest: creating soil beds and a blue spruce kitchen treat (9/3/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardens – Wild Horse Fire Brigade: successful fire mitigation since the beginning of…plants (7/31/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardening (HANG) – Gardening with nature’s beautiful bouncers (7/3/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardening (HANG) – Enjoying nature in summer, high altitude landscaping, and weed control (6/7/2025)
- High Altitude Nature and Gardening (HANG) – May: new trees from tree branches, plant partners, bee kind (5/3/2025)