Last edited on 27 Jan 2021. View history

Kale Vate's Blue Curled

A variety of kale

How to sow kale Vate's blue curled: Direct seed. If planting indoors, harden off before transplanting seedlings outside.

Sun requirement for kale Vate's blue curled: Plant in Full Sun

Kale is a cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea. It has green or purple leaves that branch off from one to multiple upright stems and do not form a head like cabbage. The plant is usually grown as an annual, but if grown as a perennial, it will form seeds in the second year. Current popular varieties include Curly kale, Italian kale, and Red Russian kale (green leaves with pale purple stems). It can be grown as baby salad greens or for bunching adult leaves. Leaves are sweeter after a frost and delicious eaten raw, added to salads, sautéed, or added to stews and casseroles.

1: planting
0: harvests
0: seed packets

Growstuff is a free, community-run site for people who grow food. Keep track of what you plant and harvest, find seeds to swap, and see what is growing near you. Join to record your own kale Vate's blue curled.

Kale vate's blue curled facts

Lifespan

Annual living and reproducing in a single year or less

4 weeks median lifespan

What are growing degree days?

A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.

Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.

For kale Vate's blue curled, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 7°C and a shortest growing cycle of 60 days at its best temperature, about 690 growing degree days to a first harvest.

Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your kale Vate's blue curled will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.