Collard Flowers: how to get an extra collard crop! - 9 original photos - ColorChallenge - Wednesday's Yellow
Collards! One of my favorite garden greens! When they flower, the bees go wild. And I eventually get to enjoy a different collard harvest. What is it? Come into my post and see!
Collards are so productive and so reliable. They are related to kale, but I think collards hold up better to hot weather and they taste better then, too. Even when collard leaves are big and old, they taste the same as younger leaves, without getting bitter. I grow and eat a lot of collards!
Planted in the spring, I get plenty of harvest that summer, all through the fall, and into the darkest few weeks of winter. After their first winter, the plants will send up a flowerstalk and put their energy into flowers. I cut the flowerstalks off a lot of them - they are delicious! But I let a few flower.
By fall, the bee-pollinated flowers have turned into long pods with 5-10 seeds each. That's a lot of seeds! Way more than what I need to start the next year. But I still save the seed. Why? To grow as sprouts! People pay good money for broccoli sprouts - and collard sprouts are just as good! They don't have to go through a cold cycle to sprout, so they are easy to manage.
My favorite variety of collards is a hybrid, "Flash". I can get Flash collards to last for three years, with two crops of seeds. That's not bad for one planting, although I'd like to get them to become perennials. Because they are hybrids, any plants from my saved seed won't be 'true to type" or just like their parents. But they still make great collard sprouts for eating! Highly recommended!
What Do You Think?
- Do you like to eat collard greens?
- Have you ever grown collards?
- Do you like sprouts to eat?
- Do you harvest any seeds to sprout for food?
Here are some other flower portraits that you may like, from earlier Color Challenges: Cerinthe // Do Red Roses Taste Better? // Can I Eat Any Rose? // This Rose is Worth Eating! // A Fantastically Delicious Rose // How to Preserve Roses for Food and Crafts // True Blue Lobelia
** Haphazard Homestead **
Wow! These must glow-in-the-dark!!! Upped and resteemed!
Thanks, @dutchess! They do glow in the right light. They are a beautiful flower! The bees are all over them, so they must be full of nectar, too. Thanks for the resteem!
Sweet you said? Then i have to try them. You know how much i love sweet stuff! Oh, do you make bread with flowers too?
They are sweet like a carrot is sweet, but not like a mango is sweet. I don't make much bread, but I should. I put flowers in pancakes and omelets a lot. But I slack on the bread. : (
Ooooh! I was wondering about bread. How are you supposed to make bread with flowers? I have no idea!
Maybe I will make some lavender bread! :D
Yaay! Loking forward to read the post!
And you can always put dandelion flower petals in anything! You probably can't taste them unless you use a lot, but they are in there, lol! :D
Ha!
Great post! I am definitely putting collards on my list for next year.
They are so worth growing! I like them better than kale, and I really like kale! :D
I hate to admit I didn't even know they had flowers!
I think most people pull them out of their garden before the winter sets in. So there are some advantages to being Haphazard, lol. They might overwinter in southern Michigan under cover. I used to finally harvest all my cole crops, like broccoli and kale, after Thanksgiving. But I never tried to get them to overwinter there.
Beautiful yellow flowers!
Thanks! Collards are pretty -- and a good garden plant for eating!
So that's what it is called in English! Here is Portugal it is called Couve Galega. It grows to enormous size! Last summer I took a shot of one that was taller than me (I am regular height ;) )
And since there is no harsh winters here, you have the leaves all year round and it is used in soooo many typical Portugese dishes.
I sent some seeds to Norman and he tried to grow them too :)
I remember we tried to figure out the difference in these plants, over on Tsu. The collards have yellow flowers and your Couve Galega has white flowers, I'm pretty sure. I grew it as "Portuguese Kale". It's leaves are a lot bigger than the collards. I need to make a post about those plants - they are amazing! @liliana.duarte made a post showing how she makes a traditional soup with it: Calo Verde.
When is Norman going to get here onto Steemit? I hope you can convince him!
Yea, the flowers are white. I couldn't tell from the photo is they are bigger or not. I know it grows huge!
I dunno. Soon hopefully :)
When I have grown them, the Portuguese Kale has much bigger leaves, but doesn't grow as tall. The Collards can get really tall, but their leaves are not as thick or as large. Your Couve Galega has such huge leaves!
I heard that somewhere in the North of Portugal they grow few meters tall. Never saw then. The tallest I saw could be 1,8 m.
The leaves are very big... two or three and you have a soup ready :D
Wow! That's tall! The ones I grew, the leaves were so big! But the rib in the middle of the leaf was still tender and mild-tasting. So good!
I haven't seen them before, they are a beautiful colour would definitely brighten up a salad :)
I think you would like these flowers to eat!
I like trying new things :)
That's how you got on Steemit, too! :D
And I liked it and stayed :D
Yep, you are persistent and consistent! And an important part of Steemit!
Ahh thank you that's so sweet :)
And sincere! : )
Beautiful flowers with bright color! It sounds good for eating, too! Very interesting!
I do like to eat flowers, lol!
That's good for you and very healthy! ;)
I have to balance out all the cookies! ; )
You are really well cooking on those things! ;D
:D
;))
Beautiful)))
Thanks!