Plant · P-337

Collards

Brassica oleracea var viridis

Collards hold their leaves through both hundred-degree summer heat and hard freezes down to about -15C, a spread few other cabbage-family crops can match, which makes them close to a year-round leaf crop. The cooked leaves carry a strong cabbage flavor, and a planting left to flower in spring gives a second harvest of young shoots tasting close to sprouting broccoli. Left standing through a mild winter it turns biennial and bolts to seed - worth deciding on deliberately rather than letting it happen by accident.