Winter crops - kale etc.

RAS

2p, I think you're referring to Welsh onions which are like a perennial spring onion. Lost mine unfortunately.

Been planting Japanese/ winter onions recently, which provide somewhat earlier large bulbs if the winter ain't too wet or freezing.

Newbie_John

My ones do ok under frost, they definitely taste better as well!

Paul_with_the_tools

Japanese salads and mustards do well for Winter salad. Leeks, Kale, Cabbabge and Cauliflower all grow well in the Winter. Evergreen herbs too. You can always grow carrots and stroe them in the ground as well, I have done it with carrots but you can also do it with other roots as well. More info on Gardeners World.

Newbie_John

I've just recently purchased 3 perennial kales:

Purple Tree Collard
Taunton Deane
Daubenton

They seem to do exactly what I need - hardy and live for about 5 years, so no need to plant them every year - saving space - as it's easier to pick leaves from the large plant rather than little ones.

Has anyone got any experience with them?

twopenny

Not of kale but I used to grow perennial broccoli.
Not only great in itself but if you did plant new each year as well it produced early on the newer plants giving a longer cropping.

Wonder if it would work with the kale?

Newbie_John

Yeah, there is a lot of youtube videos about people growing these kales and they literally look like small trees :-) 

But I'm really curious about the caterpillars resistance (if any), taste (honest), how easy they are to grow them etc. Obvs in YouTube everyone says they are the best thing they ever had   

I will update in a year time, just got small 10cm sticks from eBay, planted them into pots in conservatory and will move them outdoor in about 2-3 months.

ArbitraryRandom

If you want to check you like it before then, asda sell curly kale for about 75p a bag (they also do a mix of baby leaves of spinach, kale and beetroot for about the same). 

Depending on your specific variety, it may be slightly more or less bitter than the supermarket variety - but it's nice cooked crispy in the air fryer or fried in a pan with butter and a bit of pepper. 

Newbie_John

I was meant to give an update after a year but here we go two years later the 20cm sticks are now nearly 2m little trees!
Other updates:
- tastes very similar to kale, so we used it in all sorts of dishes, salads or eaten straight of the tree
- catapillars love them sadly, so in a summer I collect many of them daily
- summer it's actually the worst time for its growth, it doesn't like the heat, plus leafs get eaten
- it grows really well in Spring and autumn so many leafs
- the branches get very long and break during windy weather
- frost is fine, I've read somewhere that it's ok to -7°C and -14°C is the max limit but who knows

Sapindus

I have always tried to keep the soil covered and busy over winter.  If I can't have things actually growing, I used to cover it with a deep mulch of dead leaves and it would be soft and ready to dig way before anyone else's.  

Corn salad (lamb's lettuce) for salads seems to germinate and grow away just about any time of year. Land cress is a bit peppery for salad but makes good soup in the winter if you can keep the pigeons off.  Both of these grew freely all over my allotment.

Garlic if you get an autumn planting variety.

Broad beans again get an autumn sown variety, or grow field bans which are even hardier and almost as nice to eat if picked young.

Various cabbage tribe such as kale, brocolli etc have already been mentioned.

Black Spanish radish you can sow late summer/early autumn and have a winter crop.