Kale.

Conditions at a glance

• Light Sun · tolerates light shade
• Warmth Cool-season · keeps growing past the first frosts
• Humidity Not fussy
• Water Steady — it is a big leafy plant and a pot dries out fast
• Pot size ~30 cm wide and deep for one plant · compact varieties
• First harvest Baby leaves at 10–15 cm tall · full leaves from late summer

Grow it in your space

1. Sow 1 cm deep, from early spring through to midsummer — either in a small pot to move on later, or straight into the ground where it is going to grow.
2. Give it more room than it looks like it needs: 30–60 cm between plants, depending on the variety. For a baby-leaf patch you can sow far closer, around 7.5–10 cm, and pick it young instead.
3. In a container, one plant to a pot about 30 cm wide and 30 cm deep, and choose a compact variety — a full-size curly kale in a small pot spends the season being cramped.
4. A sunny spot is best; it will accept light shade.
5. Net it early. Kale is a cabbage, and the whole cabbage-family pest list treats it as one. Fine mesh put on before the butterflies arrive is the entire job; after they arrive it is too late.
6. Then leave it through the autumn. It keeps producing well beyond the first frosts, and the cooler the weather the better it tastes — so clearing the pot in October is the one temptation worth resisting.

How to tell it's ready

• Two or three of the lower leaves at a time — work from the bottom upwards and leave the growing point in the middle alone. That is what turns one plant into months of picking rather than one meal.
• Usable size, not a date on the calendar — pick a leaf as soon as it is big enough to be worth cooking. Waiting for some official maturity only gets you tougher leaves.
• Baby leaves at 10–15 cm tall — a thickly sown patch is meant to be cut young — take individual leaves, or cut the whole little rosette and let it come again.
• After the first frosts, not before them — cold weather improves the flavour rather than ending the crop; the leaves are still worth harvesting and cooking even once they have been frozen.

Watch-outs

• Cabbage caterpillars — shredded leaves and green caterpillars from midsummer on — the most likely thing to ruin a plant. Mesh before they arrive beats picking them off after.
• Flea beetles — a peppering of tiny round holes. Cosmetic on an established plant, but it can stall seedlings, so keep them covered while they are small.
• Clubroot — stunted plants with swollen, distorted roots. It lives in the soil for years, so don't follow one cabbage-family crop with another in the same ground — a pot of fresh compost sidesteps it entirely.
• Pigeons — in winter, with little else around, pigeons will strip a kale plant back to its ribs. Netting is the only thing that reliably works.